Is there an extra setting somewhere that could inhibit this?

I ask because I've reached Book 1, and even completed it, and IC does show the achievements online on the web site, but I still don't have the song enabled in my song selection.

Everything I've read here implies that just reaching the mode is sufficient, but I'm wondering if I missed a detail somewhere.

(By the way, hi. I got my Rush Premium six weeks ago, been busily trying to catch up on these threads, have now read all nearly-10,000 posts in this one. New to Pinside, not new to pinball though, been collecting since '96, though there was a 20-year hiatus after I filled up my basement and before recently moving into a different house with more space for pinball machines. Wasn't even planning to get a pin this year, but I'm a big Rush fan since the early days and so when I saw at a recent pinball show it was out, I realized I had to get it. I'm so out of the loop, I hadn't even known until then there was a Rush game coming out!)

Thanks for confirming. In hindsight, I'm wondering if I was looking in the wrong place. I.e. maybe I was looking at the end of the song list, instead of in its proper place chronologically on "Farewell to Kings". After updating my machine to 0.98 today, I found the song in its proper place in the list.

But I'm not 100% sure that's what happened, because even after finding it there, on a later game I found it missing again. And that time I'm positive I was looking in the right place. To further confuse matters, when I found it missing, I scrolled all the way through the song list again back to where it was supposed to be, and it showed up again.

I think that there's a glitch in the song selection somehow. I would submit a bug report to Stern, but I've only seen it happen that one time, and I have no idea what might have precipitated it, so I don't think I'm able to provide any sort of actionable information at the moment. I wonder if the song selection code reverifies the unlocked song every time a new game is started, and my Internet connection had a momentary delay right when it was trying to do that.

Very weird, indeed.

My wifi is generally very good. Other devices get full bars in the game room. Though, as others have found, the wifi dongle for the machine does not perform well; I gave up trying to update via IC, because the download over wifi was so slow. But it seems sufficient for the other IC stuff, such as logging in to start a new game (though I am definitely looking forward to setting up the "home team" feature). More to the point, my Internet provider is Starlink and because of the way that works, I do get 5-10 second delays every now and then (a few times a day). So I can't jump to the conclusion that a connection problem is necessarily the wifi.

Unless it becomes a serious issue, I probably won't worry about it. I usually just let the game pick the song randomly anyway, so unless for some reason it just doesn't select "Cygnus X-1" as part of that feature, I won't have a reason to go pick that one manually.

If I do continue to run into problems, I guess I would probably hardwire the connection and try it that way for a while to see if would improve the situation. That would give me more info about whether it's the wifi or the actual Internet connection that's the issue. (Of course, in the case of the latter, it could even be Stern's own servers...I don't really have a great way to tell the difference between a problem with them and a problem with me ). Presumably this would also let me update via IC instead of having to use the USB drive.

All that said, if it were me writing the software, I would have the game grab the info about any unlocks when the user first logs in. That way, if the login succeeds at all, the user is guaranteed the machine has all their info. I get that deferring the unlock check until the actual game play/song selection stage ensures the machine has the most up-to-date info about the user, but assuming that machine is the only place the user is logged into a machine, the machine could update its user state info any time it might have changed. And I don't think I'd worry too much about the scenario where the user is logged into multiple machines, assuming that's even allowed. Eagerly retrieving the info would provide a better user experience overall, IMHO.

Oh well, no big deal one way or the other. Even if I do decide to manually select the song, and even if it doesn't show up right away, it looks like there's a reasonable work-around to just give the machine a few seconds to catch up. Definitely falls into "first-world problems" (or should I say "New World problems"? ). Mainly, I'm just glad I'm not losing my mind, or at least any more than I already was.

There have been a couple of mentions of this earlier in this thread. The short version is that if you're using the diagnostic menu to adjust the bias, it's got at least two weird things about it: it's implemented backwards, so you have to move the minute hand to the correct position, but then adjust the bias the same number of steps in the opposite direction; and you need to use the "back/cancel" button to store the setting, not the "select" button as one might expect.

Here's a more elaborated description:

Here's what my clock looks like without any adjustment, at the start of the game. Note that it's just a hair off to the left:

Game start, incorrect position

Note that it's easier to start a game before beginning the adjustment process, because the adjustment process starts by default where the hand is and a new game tries to put the hand right at the 12 o'clock position. I think by using the "move" mode in the menu you can set the minute position to 0 explicitly during adjustment, but I found that with the already non-intuitive behavior from this menu, it was easy to get confused about where the minute really should be pointing. Starting a game first to force the hand to the 0-minute position avoided making my brain work too hard.

Also, make sure you've pulled out the coin door interlock switch (the white plunger just inside the coin door near the hinge), so that the playfield electrics are enabled and the clock adjustments will have an effect. I know most everyone who might perform this adjustment already knows this, but I figure I should mention just in case.

So, having started a new game, using the service menu, navigate to the "Drum Clock Test":

Navigation to Drum Clock Test

Note that once there, the test has two modes: "Move" and "Adjust". Use the "Start" button to toggle between the modes:

Move/Adjust mode composite

Once you're in "Adjust" mode, use the "+" or "-" button to move the clock's minute hand to the correct vertical position, like this:

Adjusted to correct position

In my example here, note that it took two steps to move from the original position to the correct position, and this changed the bias value from "1" to "-1". Your clock may be different. What's important is how many steps away from the original position you went.

Once you know the number of steps, now go the other way twice that number of steps. I.e. go back to the original position, and then go the same number of steps again in that same direction. Again, do this using the "+" or "-" button as appropriate to your game's needs. Don't push any other buttons, or you'll either confirm the setting (if you push the "back/cancel" button) or you'll get the adjustment into a weird sort-of-saved state where the minute hand goes right back to where you started but now the bias value is different.

If you've done it right, the minute hand will look like it's even worse than before:

Adjusted to correct bias

But this will be the correct bias value you need. At this point, you can press the "back/cancel" button. The game should display a message saying that it's updated the adjustment before going back to the previous menu level. At this point, you can exit all the way out of the menus, start a new game, and your clock should now be adjusted correctly:

Game start, correct position

I just updated my machine to 0.98 yesterday, and I'm pretty sure that even though it wasn't in the notes, they did in fact fix this.

Twice I had a ball save launch, go right around the orbit and through the pops then SDTM without touching anything. The game just served up another ball. Icing on the cake: it didn't launch the ball, but instead just waited for me to launch it manually. I think this is better than just launching again, because it avoids the game getting into an endless loop of auto-launches.

I agree that it would be better if the regular setting provided a direct way to see the effect on the clock. But for better or worse, the diagnostic menu is where that feedback lives.

And once you're there, I'm not seeing the difference between setting the bias there and setting it in the settings proper. It is literally setting the exact same value; if you set it in the diagnostic menu, and then go look in the settings proper, it will have changed there too. So if you're going to be in the diagnostic menu to find the correct bias setting, you might as well just go ahead and set the bias there.

So I can't help wondering what you mean. If I'm going to "use the diagnostic tool for the clock to find the bias I need", why would I then go to the trouble of exiting out of that menu, navigating to the regular settings, and modify the bias value there, when I can do the exact same adjustment in the diagnostic tool?

That's really cool. Thanks for sharing.

I wonder if instead of having to track down a milling machine, as well as someone with the expertise to use it, one could make the necessary holes with some patience and a leather hole punch. It's not ideal to have to buy a tool like that just for this one purpose, but on the other hand, it's a lot cheaper and easier to get through the door than a milling machine.

Yeah, I can't speak to that. I've only had my machine six weeks and it came with 0.97. The bias could be set in diagnostics in that version of the code.

Do be aware, since the UI is non-intuitive, it's possible someone might think the diagnostics tool couldn't set the bias, but they just didn't know the magic buttons to push (you have to put it in "adjust" mode, and then you use the "back/cancel" button to actually save the adjustment, which IMHO is just plain backwards; but then the adjustment itself is backwards too, so maybe someone at Stern figured the two wrongs made a right. ).

Whether that explains what you or someone else might have seen in the earlier versions of the code, I obviously can't say.

Oh, they come in all sizes.

If getting one solely for this purpose, I'd probably go with a cheapo rotary punch from Harbor Freight.

But there are a wide range of options at a wide range of price points, including both individual punches as well as much higher end (and higher quality) rotary punches. An example of the selection can be seen at this leather supply company.

Cool. 2112 mode is finally here! Not that I'm going to be seeing that any time soon. But still, it's something to look forward to.

As far as the other changes go...

• Scoring changes: looks like they've adjusted things to make it a little easier to reach certain modes, as well as to get slightly higher scores. I wonder if this will help less-skilled players like me get to 2112? Maybe that's even the intent.
• The one thing that does bug me is "Changed the blue planet rules so the side loop and side ramp are their own
  separate shots" for the Cygnus X-1: The Voyage mode. Most owners have not installed any of the work-arounds for the faulty design of the inner loop. Personally, I've only tried the felt option so far, and I've been underwhelmed by its effect. Yeah, it slows the ball a little sometimes. But I still get lots of misses on the switch, and now a slow ball sometimes gets stuck up there. Making the side (inner) loop its own shot is making that mode significantly harder, because it could take many many successful attempts at the shot before the machine actually registers it.

  It's my opinion Stern should not be making this change, until they have come up with and delivered an official fix for their defect.

So, who's going to install the new code first? Me, I'm going to wait and see whether anyone finds any new bugs that got introduced this time around.

Sorry, you're both missing my point. Let me try to express it more clearly.

Whether I have installed a possible fix or not is irrelevant to what I'm saying.

Ignoring for the moment my own reasons for purchasing or not third-party options to address the problem (I am well aware of all of the available options, including the acrylic/clear-PETG panel installed above the lane that hasn't yet been mentioned in response to my post), the fact remains that only a fraction of the delivered machines will ever receive these fixes. It's well and good for the people who are aware these fixes exist and are willing to take a shot at trying them, if they want to do that. If it fixes their machine, great.

But Stern has a broader responsibility to their owners, because most will not have these fixes and they are significantly and negatively affecting them when they implement a rule change that increases the importance of the defective shot.

If these fixes were 100% reliable (they are not...for each option, I've seen multiple people post here saying that while in most cases the situation is improved, the switch is still missed a significant amount of time), and if Stern were taking it upon themselves to select a particular fix, purchase it on behalf of every single owner, and ship the fix to those owners, then they would be justified in modifying the rules to make the shot more important.

But until that happens, they shouldn't be making rules tweaks that do that. There's nothing fundamentally wrong with the rules tweak, but it needs to wait to happen until Stern's got all the machines working properly.

(Unless of course their intent is to drive business to the third-party mod makers who are profiting from Stern's error. I doubt that's the case. I doubt Stern cares one way or the other about those businesses. But that's the only reason I can see that would logically justify Stern's choice to make this rule change now before they've got the machine fixed.)

That's awesome about the rule sheet. Thanks for pointing that out!

As for the rule change, I personally find it a lot easier to not hit a shot than to make one.

Previously, I could complete The Voyage by making just the side ramp (along with the other shots). Now I have to make both the side ramp and the inner loop, a shot that rarely registers on my machine.

Having the inner loop turn red didn't matter, because it was unlikely the machine would notice a ball going through that lane anyway (Murphy's Law notwithstanding). And even if it did, once I've made those shots, assuming they weren't the last ones for the blue planet, I could focus on the other shots, and not risk shooting the side ramp or inner loop at all.

So, no...I don't agree that this change makes it easier to complete the blue planet. It definitely makes it harder. The reduction in red shots doesn't come close to balancing out the difficulty in getting the inner loop to be registered now that it's required for completing the mode.

You don't have to hit every shot, no not technically, but if you're trying to boost the score as much as possible before hitting a scoop, you essentially do.

My use of the word "required" was hyperbolic, I admit. But the rule change still dramatically changes the scoring potential on games where the inner loop is not registering shots, and the reduction in red shots doesn't significantly offset that fact.

Please don't make assumptions about my emotional state. You don't have a clue.

Nor were you paying attention to my clarification because you seem to still think my comments are strictly about my experience, rather than the impact the updated code has on the entire ownership community.

You're welcome to your own opinion, but I don't appreciate you insulting me.

I appreciate you providing additional context. I may be new to this forum, but I'm hardly new to collecting pinball machines. This isn't even my first NIB machine. It is, however, my first Stern machine and I admit that there is likely much I'm unaware of with respect to their reputation with the community.

Maybe other people are fine with design or manufacturing defects (I consider it the former, but if only a few machines have the problem I guess one could argue it's a manufacturing defect instead), but I don't agree that that means my opinion on the topic is invalid. I personally don't think it's unreasonable to expect it to be possible to get the machine to reliably detect a ball for every shot on the machine, including the inner loop. If it's just a matter of some adjustment to make, that'd be fine. I don't mind "getting my hands dirty". The problem for me is the assumption that all the owners with defective machines are just going to go to the third-party commerce sources for a fix, with Stern doing nothing more than absolving themselves of any responsibility on the matter.

And for what it's worth, I do have a reply via my distributor directly from Stern saying that they are aware of the problem and that their "engineering team is looking into a fix". Now, that may very well be slimy corporate double-speak for "don't hold your breath". But I'd like to think they can be taken at their word and they will eventually provide support to those with affected machines. And given that, I don't think it's asking too much for them to hold off on changes to the software that make the shot more important than it already is (it's bad enough that it's how to increase the bonus multiplier) until they actually do have a fix available to owners.

I can be plenty patient waiting for Stern to address the issue, and IMHO it's reasonable to expect the software team to be at least as patient about it as I am being.

To be clear, I'm not saying they shouldn't release 1.0. I'm just saying this was an optional rule change that easily could have waited until later, or never at all.

But, point taken. Reasonable people can reasonably disagree about where the threshold for "this can wait" is.

What games have you owned NIB? I don't believe the other manufacturers (of new games) are any better (than Stern). Dialing in a game is pretty standard for all manufacturers. Stern is arguably the most prolific pinball manufacturer over my 20 years...

My other two NIB games are the two Williams P2K machines. Both were performing flawlessly right out of the box. SWE1 did develop an annoying problem I still haven't tracked down -- the green channel for the video is flaky and comes and goes -- but to this day, Revenge From Mars has been very reliable, with just a little flipper trouble (now fixed) that only cropped up recently. Granted, others have not been so lucky as the years have gone by and electronics have deteriorated, but when new both of those games were solid.

And yes, Stern obviously is the most prolific company over the last 20 years, having been active for most of those 20 years while others have not, and by far the one with the most experience and resources. So? Nowhere have I said anything to suggest these flaws simply shouldn't exist. I'm well aware of the challenges involved in getting such a complex mechanical device to work correctly the first time out without fail, and I don't fault Stern for having missed this issue or others, at all.

I just feel that Stern could and should do a better job responding to these concerns when they come up, and should not be in a Rush to tweak game rules when there are still large numbers of games out there for which such a tweak will have negative consequences.

I have had similar issues where the song didn't show up in the list. I suspect that it has to do with my Internet connection and/or Stern's IC servers. I.e. the game does not seem to cache the achievement info; if it cannot verify your account status when you are choosing songs, that song won't show up.

For what it's worth, the most recent time I found the song missing, I knew for sure it was enabled for my account, and so I tried scrolling all the way around to the end of the song list and back to the beginning again, and when I got to "Farewell to Kings", the song had reappeared. So maybe if you run into that glitch again, you can try that and see if it helps.

Since you've already looped Stern in, maybe you've got this all figured out, but your plea piqued my curiosity so I took a look, and yes...the RGB modules look like the thing you took a picture of. I admit it does have a similar shape to the SMD inductor components (suggested by someone else), but those are much larger, with part #'s printed on them.

You mention the upper scoop arrow insert lamp being out. Here's a photo of what that component (LED12 on board 9A, framed in red in the photo) looks like on my machine:

LED12 on board 9A, framed in red

On my board, the LED package has a white base, but otherwise it (and all the other RGB lamps) looks pretty much the same as the component you asked about. Minor differences in packaging like that wouldn't be unusual, especially these days with manufacturers getting electronic components from wherever they can at any given time.

I'll bet if you unfastened your own 9A board and (carefully, so as to not scrape any other components off the board by accidentally hitting something hard on the playfield underside) turned the board over so you can see where LED12 is, you'll find it missing.

I'm sure you can easily figure out where the board is, given you already know which lamp is not working, but just to be complete here's the board layout drawing from the machine manual showing where board 9A is on the underside of the playfield. The board itself is labeled "6", but that's just the ID on the table on the page. The board's actual name is "9A":

playfield bottom, board 9A framed in red

If/when you confirm that's where the component came from, I'd guess you shouldn't have any trouble getting Stern to replace the board. It's not feasible for the average person to remount a SMD component in the field, and assuming you never had the board off, the component coming off like that would only be some sort of manufacturing error.

Yes. I think others have mentioned similar issues, stemming from the very poor wifi adapter the game uses. What I saw was the game would download extremely slowly, and then eventually (after hours of slow progress) it seemed to give up without leaving any sort of status message or anything. When I started the update again, it would resume where it left off, which I guess is better than nothing.

But at the end of the day, unless you can improve the wifi situation, e.g. by bringing the access point very close to the machine, or by using the wired Ethernet connector instead of wifi, you are probably better off downloading to your PC and then putting the files on a USB thumb drive for the actual update installation. Make sure the thumb drive is formatted as FAT32, not exFAT or NTFS, otherwise the machine won't recognize the drive.

(Another option is to use the SD card to update, but if I understand the instructions correctly for that, doing so will reset all the settings and high scores on the machine, which the other update methods don't do, so I figure that's a last resort, or for people who really want to keep a library of all the old versions of the code that they can swap in easily for whatever reason.)

Hmmm. Normally, it wouldn't be feasible to try to repair this kind of problem, where a SMD component has fallen off the board. But...if there's a huge backlog getting replacement parts, it might be worth trying to repair the board, where it's just that the part fell off but you still have it.

With the right tools, it's doable. A hot air rework station is the main thing, along with various supplies (solder, flux, isopropyl alcohol, tweezers, etc.). If there's an electronics repair shop in the neighborhood (there often isn't, but you never know), or even just a maker space with some reasonably skilled people who hang out there, folks who have had components fall off might be able to find someone to solder the component back on.

Just a thought.

Ah, good catch. Yeah, repairing the traces is much trickier, best left to a professional.

Repair shops who could handle this are scattered around the country, sadly not as common as they might have used to be. There is one Internet-famous shop with their own YouTube channel, here: https://www.youtube.com/c/NorthridgeFix. They take mail-in boards. Don't know what they'd charge, probably better to just wait for the replacement, but thought I'd mention them because the tech who makes their videos is extremely competent.

If nothing else, one could watch their videos to get an idea of what's involved in fixing traces. It's not rocket science, but it clearly requires good tools and a steady hand.

I don't think there's a "one size fits all" answer to that. At the very least, it will depend on your skill level, and for the more skilled players, to some extent it's "player's choice" because of the wide range of scoring options. That said...

I believe theoretically the best strategy is to take advantage of all the various score multiplier options. Most of the modes (all? I'm not sure if I've overlooked one) give bigger payoffs for the key shots if you wind the game up first by completing more than the minimum number of qualifying shots. And of course there's the bonus multiplier, which you increase by shooting the spinner some number of times (increasing with each interval, starting with 100 and then increasing by 100 for each subsequent increment) and then hitting the inner loop shot.

But as a counter-example to that theoretical reality, consider my own experience. My highest score is only 1.4 B, and I made that score before I had spent enough time with the game to learn all the rules and practice the shots. It did include reaching The Voyage, but that only added a few hundred thousand, if I recall correctly. More to the point, in that game my primary focus was just keeping the ball in play and since then I have been trying harder now to make specific shots and work my way through all the different modes more intentionally. And my scores have been much lower, because I'm just not that good at the shots yet. I am making lots more shots than I used to because of the practice, but I feel like I'm actually getting more drains, because more often now I'll just barely miss a shot, and the return causes the ball to roll out of reach, whether out an outlane or STDM.

I'm getting better, and can more consistently score in the 200-300M range now, but I suspect that if I went back to just focusing on keeping the ball in play and starting modes as soon as I can, that at least for now I'd score even higher on average.

I'd say that if you're still working on getting better at making the specific shots at will, if your main goal is a higher score, then just getting through the modes as quickly as possible and focusing on keeping the ball in play is probably better than taking advantage of all the multiplier opportunities. The modes have much higher scoring opportunities than the base play, and often you get at least some multiplication just through the natural progression of the mode. Plus, if you can make it to the Cygnus X-1 modes, they both offer high scoring opportunities, and The Voyage isn't even that hard IMHO (Hemispheres, now that's a different story...it broke my brain when I tried it standalone; but then I haven't tried swapping my actual hands yet, so maybe that "soft cheat" is a good strategy).

I feel like The Voyage is easier to get to too, at least on my machine; three of the multiball modes just involve bashing the Time Machine, and I don't have much trouble with shots to the TM coming back down the middle. The other three are harder, but Headlong Flight is just a matter of staying alive long enough (and now it's even easier to get to), while the other two are eventually going to happen as well, if you can just keep the ball going. And since you only have to start the modes, that alone makes The Voyage much easier to get to than Hemispheres, where you have to actually complete all the record modes.

Not being a more-skilled player, I can't speak authoritatively for what the actual optimal strategy is, but I suspect that it involves setting up the multipliers as much as possible before starting modes, and getting a mode going before starting a multiball mode. Naturally, this will also include collecting as many albums as possible too, as The Weapon can significantly boost scores during modes when used judiciously (e.g. it's a great way to start out Limelight, or to finish up the third wave of Tom Sawyer).

I look forward to hearing what the actual strategy for the more-skilled players is, from those who are scoring in the 4-8B range.

"New Outside Box"?

Hmmm...you might want to check with your distributor. Those games are supposed to come in the box, not outside of them. Seems like they might have gotten the packing backwards.

For those still having trouble with their inner loop (aka "side loop") not registering the ball, I now have another option to offer. I designed a guide to fit on top of the metal wall that forces the ball back down onto the playfield to make sure the switch is triggered.

I've only played with it installed for a couple of hours so far, amounting to probably 70-100 shots around the loop, but the part is working perfectly. I went from almost never registering the loop, to registering it literally 100% of the time, zero failures.

Rendered model for Rush inner loop guide part

Note that this is along the same lines as the product that NinjaCamp offers. However, it's a completely different, from scratch design. It's lower-profile; I printed it in black and hardly notice it on the loop (see photo at either site where it's published), and it'll never get in the way of slow balls coming the wrong way.

More to the point, this is for people who just need that one fix and who either have their own 3D printer or want to outsource the printing to a third party. I am not offering to print this for people, so please don't ask. I'm just sharing my design with the community because I had decided to make it anyway, and now there's another option available to fix the issue.

I've published the design on Thingiverse and Printables.com.

Feel free to comment at either site if you have questions specific about the part or its design.

If you don't have a 3D printer but still want to try this part, you can check out print services like Xometry or Shapeways. It looks like you can get this part printed and shipped for around $10-15 at either of those places, depending on process. FDM or SLS being the most economical...I don't know how materials other than PETG or TPU, both of which I believe should work fine, will fare but I'd guess nylon at the very least would be fine, probably PLA too, and Shapeways does have a TPU option if you just want to play it safe.

Turns out, UPS stores are starting to add 3D printing services too, if you don't want to wait for shipping. I don't know anything about them, but they say they've got almost 100 locations already.

You're welcome to your opinion. I'm puzzled though, why you're so invested in it that you felt a need to post that dissertation. Especially when you know (or at least should know) it's not an opinion shared by all.

Everyone has their own reasons to judge each available solution according to their own needs and preferences. What's right for you is not necessarily right for everyone else. Why do you feel a need to act otherwise?

For my own part, I probably could've accepted the option of installing acrylic over the lane (your preferred solution). But on my game, there's at least a full millimeter of distance between the top of the ball and the top of the lane, so I have less confidence that covering the lane like that is a complete solution. If it is for other people, great. But that doesn't obviate the other options for me and others.

Furthermore, while I do have a friend with a laser cutter and I could take a sheet of acrylic over there to make that kind of part, I own a 3D printer, I know how to design 3D parts, and would prefer to do everything in-house if I can. I don't begrudge others making a profit on Stern's mistakes, but I'd rather do things myself if I can. I'm happy with the way my part works, just like other people are happy with the acrylic (and PETG) sheet options, as well as the NinjaCamp option. What's wrong with options?

And I think that those options should include viable DIY options. It's a shame no one has released an SVG or similar for the lane cover. Actually, I guess if there's interest it wouldn't be hard for me to make one, since I had to go to the trouble to digitize the lane already for the part I made. But at least for those who have 3D printers, now there's a way for people to print their own part (which costs pennies to do, if you've already got the printer and the materials), instead of being beholden to the folks selling their own solutions.

Who knows? Maybe there's someone out there with a 3D printer, but no access to a laser printer, and who would rather fabricate their own part than buy it from someone else, and so while they might even prefer the lane cover if all else were equal, the situation leads them to choose a 3D printed piece instead.

And for those who are stuck buying a ready made solution, why shouldn't they have options? I can't speak for any of them, but maybe some prefer to have easier access to the lane (e.g. if a ball gets stuck or something), or are already buying other NinjaCamp stuff so it's easier for them to use their part than to get the lane cover. Or whatever. I don't see any need to spend effort trying to make them feel bad about their personal preference about which option they prefer.

One dissertation deserves another.

As far as your attempt to side-step criticism goes...your opening was IMHO disingenuous, akin to the pattern of speech that goes "I'm not racist, but...". You immediately followed your opening statement with claims like "we're coming up with fixes for a problem that has all ready been solved" and "the best way to keep a ball from getting airborne is to use an air ball preventer", making clear what you really are saying about the other options. And posting that in direct response to my attempt to contribute to the situation, feels like a straight-up attack on that attempt.

It just adds insult to injury that the rest of your post is made up mostly of attempts to justify your claim of absolute superiority of your preferred fix that are easily refuted. The next two posts after yours both make clear that even the lane cover is not a 100% solution, in spite of your claims. The NinjaCamp part doesn't cost any more than the lane cover, so assuming it works for people, it's not like the lane cover is any cheaper. And my contribution is by far the most convenient and immediate for those who can take on the printing task themselves, and at just 25 cents worth of filament is at a cost that is literally a tiny fraction of the commercial offers. Even if you get it printed at commercial printing services, its cost is roughly the same or less than those commercial offerings, for those who would like to see if it works better for them.

I suppose if other people start using it (and who knows? I may wind up with the only machine that ever has it installed), we might find a machine where the part I designed also occasionally fails to prevent the missed ball detection. I can't make any absolute claims of its perfection. But for sure, it's 100% reliable on my machine, and unlike the other options, was engineered from the ground up to account for the actual problem and be a 100% fix for it by making it impossible for a fast ball to clear the switch. With the part I designed, if a ball manages to sneak past the switch somehow, it will be because of some reason other than the ball's speed, and would be a ball that even a properly working switch would've missed anyway.

Bottom line: your claim that the lane cover is the only thing anyone could possibly need is unsupportable, and comes across as more of an attack than a helpful post.

It's a valid point. It's definitely a different approach from at least most of the machines I'm familiar with (but keep in mind, I'm mostly familiar with the pre-21st century machines...I'm just getting exposure to the new stuff, having been not so immersed in pinball the last twenty years due to other demands on my life). But for what it's worth, not only don't I mind, I find this design exciting and entertaining.

Looking at the two philosophies, the main advantage I can see for limiting specific modes to specific shots would be to give the player an opportunity to have at least one or two modes they can easily complete, i.e. the ones that have the shots that are easier for them. And I'd agree that from an accessibility point of view, there's some value in that.

But on the other hand, I have found that I really enjoy the tour of the playfield that each mode offers. You cannot generally keep making the same shot over and over, so you're forced to get good at different shots, and in the long run you also need to learn how to set up the next shot from the current one. It's a level of complexity I haven't had to deal with, on the older machines in my collection, and I'm finding it a really fun change of pace and new challenge.

I also really enjoy how each mode has its own narrative. Even the record modes where it's mostly "any shot goes" (Working Man, Limelight, Big Money), they've done a good job giving each mode a different feel. And the other three record modes do have just two or three shots at any given time that are specific to that mode; Tom Sawyer and La Villa Strangiato sequences the shots (mostly), so at any given time, you have limited choices about what will advance the mode, and even Spirit of the Radio has two key shots (spinner and VUK), with the other shots playing the secondary role of qualifying and boosting.

More to the point, the way that these shots are all used in each mode fits nicely into the conceit of the story each mode portrays. As a longtime fan of Rush, I really love this, and I'm not sure it would've been possible to provide that kind of complex fit to the songs if each mode only ever involved two or three specific shots.

Doesn't that allay your concerns? I'm not sure whether it does. Everyone is going to have their own reaction to the design. But I hope that at least gives you some insight into one player's view. I don't think they could've accomplished what they did, had each mode been limited to just a few shots each. I personally find the game a lot more interesting this way.

I take your point about some of the modes. I agree Working Man (for example) is probably one of the easiest modes because you have so many options. But even there, you can't just make the same shot over and over (e.g. the VUK, which is arguably the easiest shot to just do over and over). But I think taking all six record modes together, you can see a nice progression from "easy" to "hard".

Possibly player skill has a lot to do with one's perception of what's "too many lit shots". Maybe you're a better player than I am. But I can tell you, I've lost count of the number of times I've played the La Villa Strangiato mode and failed to even get past the first shot. I'm still trying to learn to post pass on this game, so just setting up for that shot is hard for me -- I don't yet have a reliable way to get the ball to the left flipper -- and I still can't reliably hit the ramp, more like in the 60-70% range. And you have to do that twice before you get to go on to the other shots. I've only finished that mode a handful of times in the eight weeks I've owned the game.

I would rank the record modes difficulty, easiest to hardest, as: Working Man, Big Money, Limelight, Spirit of the Radio, Tom Sawyer, and La Villa Strangiato.

I guess not everyone would have the same rank, but at least for me, at my current skill level, that's where I sit. You're right that for the easier modes, part of that comes from having more options. But I don't think I'd enjoy the game as much if all the modes were as hard as the hardest two.

I do agree that the game is more forgiving than some. But I'm not sure that has as much to do with the number of lit shots in the modes, as it does with other aspects of the playfield design. There are still plenty of ways to drain unexpectedly: a weak shot up the ramp, a bad bounce back from the lower scoop or drop targets, just the right (wrong) speed around the right orbit, that sort of thing. But I find this happens to me less on this game than others, and I appreciate it. Longer games are, to me, more about just keeping the ball in play than they are about how many shots I have to choose from at any given moment. I think the game would still be forgiving even if each record mode had fewer lit shots.

Anyway, you asked if you were missing something. I'm not sure you are. Your approach to the game seems different from mine, and that's fine. It sounds like it's not so much that you're missing anything, but just that you have different priorities, and probably a different, higher level of skill, which leads you to different conclusions about the design of the game.

"Consensus"? Yeah, good luck with that.

For my own part, I like it. I very much like the newer rules for Spirit of the Radio, and overall I like the way the game plays. There doesn't seem to be any showstopper bugs in the code; the one thing I see is the minute hand on the clock occasionally will stop working, something I've experienced myself and have seen messages from others saying happens to them too, even on the latest code that was supposed to fix the problem. But that issue doesn't affect the actual gameplay, which of course is the most important thing.

The one thing I really don't like in the code and which I wish they'd fix is that the hurry timer for Bastille Day does not get paused when the ball is temporarily locked. This includes both scoops and the Time Machine. Oddly, there do seem to be exceptions, such as the Far Cry lock. Ironically, the machine continues the countdown when it's in control of the lock, but then pauses the countdown when the player could hurry up and get the ball moving again.

I find Bastille Day hard enough to get all four targets as it is, without having to listen to Geddy count down "three, two, one...time's up hoser!" while I stand there looking at the ball being held against my will by the game.

I can see this possibly being on purpose, the game designers' way of telling me "don't go putting the ball into a lock if you want to finish Bastille Day". I guess that could potentially add some strategic play to the rules. But personally, I find it obnoxious; all the other games I'm familiar with, they are typically generous with the hurry up timers, pausing it any time the ball is plausibly out of control of the player. I wish Rush were the same in that respect.

Any reasonable brand ought to work fine. I can confirm that the drive must be formatted as FAT32, and that exFAT will not work (and presumably nor NTFS...I'm so sure about that I didn't even bother to try ).

I can't comment on whether the drive size has to be limited to 16GB or not, because as it happens, the USB drive I use is only 16GB to start with. But I would trust the previous post on that matter, especially since you're having trouble with the 64GB drive.

One hopes that Stern improves their USB drive software in the near future. It's a little ridiculous in this day and age to not be able to handle anything bigger than 16GB and while lack of NTFS support is perfectly reasonable, lack of support for exFAT is not.

I can't debate the aesthetics. I got my machine late enough that it came with the v3 scoop bumpers and to me it just looks "normal", but I can certainly see the appeal in the cleaner look of using a low-profile scoop protector. And if one type of protection looks better than the other, I have to agree that it's obviously the low-profile ones.

The low-profile ones, if you get them from NinjaCamp anyway, also have the advantage of coming in a variety of colors, so you can add a bit of flair to the machine that way. They do seem to be visually sharp.

That said, and for what it's worth, while the v3 bumpers probably do decrease the number of balls that go into the lower scoop, I have found that for me they increase the number of balls that go into the upper scoop, as well as the number of balls that hit the RUSH standup targets. I've even had some stray balls get deflected into the spinner (which now that my inner loop is working perfectly, is a much more important/useful shot for me ). The v3 bumpers create a deflection/reflection point that, while preventing balls that might have dropped into the lower scoop from doing so, send the ball in other useful directions.

At the same time, I have not found the shot into the lower scoop from either flipper to be all that hard. And I'm not really even that good a player. It's a reliable enough shot for me that it's become part of my multiball strategy, giving me a quick add-a-ball when one of the balls in play drains. So the gameplay downside of Stern's protector doesn't seem that big to me.

Granted, it'd be better if I could just make the shots I want when I want, but I'd have to say that on the whole, having the "fugly" v3 bumpers installed probably nets me more made shots than it makes me miss lower-scoop shots.

Who knows? Maybe one day I'll install a NinjaCamp style protector (though I'll probably print it myself), but for now I find that the Stern-provided solution is pretty much a wash for me in terms of which I'd prefer, since it's already installed (I'd probably feel different though if I were in a position where I had to modify the scoop one way or the other anyway).

Hmmm...on my machine, he says "you're late numb-nuts!" Which I love.

But you're right, the programming is messed up on that. First, they should spot you 5 minutes when they play that callout, so it will match the time.

But worse, I've heard that callout well into the mode, much later than 9:05. Seems like they ought to reserve it just for the start of the mode (and spot you the five minutes).

There are two different issues. Impossible to say, but if the clock minute hand stopped moving right after the update, you are probably not dealing with a problem with the board. On the other hand, the software problem is transient and usually resolves if you turn the machine off and back on again. If you do that and then still see the minute hand not working, then maybe you do have a problem with the board.

So, first step is to figure out which problem you're dealing with.

There are literally 100's of settings, most of them common to any modern pinball machine, and most of them self-explanatory IMHO. Are there any settings you are specifically needing help with?

For what it's worth, I generally stick with the factory defaults, mostly. For home users who don't want the factory defaults, the best thing to start with is to go to the "install" menu (under "utilities") and install the home-use settings. I.e. with just one setting, you can have an array of machine settings reconfigured to what Stern believes works better for the casual home user.

Also for what it's worth, on my own Rush machine, the exceptions to the factory defaults I use are to remove limits on extra-ball awards, to change replay awards to extra balls (I don't need free games ), and to disable the dynamic score-based extra ball award (in the family setting, it's not fun for the people who don't play as much to have to suffer because one or two other people did really well and pushed the score up for getting extra balls). I also lower flipper power a bit; game still plays just fine, and it reduces wear and tear on the machine.

For Rush I also set the diverter for "more auto-switching", to make that feature more discoverable/useful for new players (I'm not always around to give tips, and not everyone wants me telling them how to play the game anyway...with the default, the diverter stays on just one side for a really long time, making it hard to mix up the shots), and of course maxed out the "humor" setting.

I don't think you're going to find an exhaustive document that lists every single setting with details about what that setting does (even though I'd agree that such a document ought to exist for every machine). But if you have specific questions, I'm sure people here would be happy to answer them.

Ah. So now I understand why occasionally I see other people replying to their own posts. Turns out, it's not impossible to get confused and accidentally click the reply button instead of the edit button.

How do I delete one of my own posts? I see a "drain" button, but since that button's available on all the posts, not just the ones I wrote myself, I assume that just hides the post from me, and doesn't actually delete. Is there a way for me to clean up my mistake?

A consensus? I don't know...lots of speculation and reports of problems, but no hard facts about cause.

I can confirm that I, very occasionally, find that the minute hand on my clock stops working. This is with software v0.98, haven't upgraded to 1.0 yet. I never noticed it happening before I upgraded to 0.98, but that was in the early days of owning the game and it is possible I just didn't notice because I wasn't good enough at the game to have a reason to pay any attention to the clock hand.

Could it be a software bug? Sure. But it also could be a hardware problem. That said, release notes for the 1.0 update does mention a software change that is supposed to fix a problem with the minute hand. Some have said that with the update, they see the "hand doesn't move" problem less, but it hasn't gone away entirely. So that suggests that the problem is at least partially a software issue. Of course, some hardware problems can be fixed or mitigated/worked-around in software, so even all this evidence doesn't provide a definitive conclusion for what the actual problem is.

The bottom line is: sometimes the clock minute hand stops moving, Stern seems to be aware of the problem, and the latest release includes an attempt to fix the problem. Beyond that, is just speculation.

Everyone else I've seen discuss the problem, if the minute hand stops working, they can get it to start again (at least for a little while) by turning the machine off and then on again. This works for me too.

Glad to hear that's all it was. I'd rather have to restart the machine than replace a board, that's for sure.

Next question, it's almost like my shooter rod is too short (no pun intended). At a full draw it barely goes up the lane. Anybody else have that issue? Auto launch is fine.

No, that's not normal. Sounds like it needs adjusting. You'll want to check to make sure the plunger is straight, that it's not restricted in any way, and that the auto-launch fork isn't set too far up (which would place the ball further away from the plunger tip than it should be).

(I assume since you used the phrase "full draw" you are in fact able to pull the plunger all the way back to the rear of the scale. Obviously if that's not the case, that'd be the first thing to look at.)

FYI: the "drain" button doesn't delete a post. It just hides it from you (i.e. the person who clicked the button).

The "match" function shouldn't have changed on its own, or by changing any other discrete setting. But the "install" settings I mentioned earlier will change a wide range of discrete settings; that's the whole reason they exist. And any of the free/home use installs are likely to disable the "match", because that's technically about randomly providing a free game, which is (again, technically) useless when the machine is already set to free play.

Of course, the animation is fun to watch, and there are a few callouts associated with the feature, so I leave it turned on even though it has no practical effect.

Hah! Well, I know AFM is a well-loved, popular machine, but one of the reasons I have Medieval Madness is that it plays a lot like AFM, but isn't so cruel about always sending the ball straight back down the middle after hitting the central target. Still happens once in a while of course, but when I played AFM in the arcade back in the day, seems like every center shot came right back and drained.

So forgive me if I find it ironic that someone is steering newcomers to the machine, and worse, telling them to just shoot the middle. In my experience, that was AFM at its worst.

You're probably better playing than I am.

I just want to keep it simple for first timers. Once they destroy their first ship then they are pretty much hooked. Then I go one to explain going for the multiball and other targets. People seem overwhelmed if you start them off on a GZ or IM.

For sure. These new pins seem a lot more complicated to me. Rush is the first machine I've added to my collection in over 20 years. I've been out of the loop for a while, and I was a little shocked to see how complex the games have gotten.

Fortunately, the mechanics remain the same, and the games still adhere to the "just shoot at anything that's flashing and you're good". It's certainly more fun to know what's going on, and that's harder to do with the newer games IMHO, but friends playing Rush seem to be okay with it in spite of the complexity.

But yeah, they definitely appreciate the simpler games for sure. And the older games play slower too (well, most of them...I can definitely think of even older games that are pretty fast, but it's less common I think), which beginners appreciate more. I have at least one visitor who after trying out all the machines, settled on sticking with High Speed, the slowest of the bunch.

Not sure who you think is "complaining about deep code". I don't see any of that going on.

That said, IMHO you should have more empathy for inexperienced players. The fact is, a game -- any game, not just pinball -- is more fun to play when you know all the rules. I still remember what it was like, many decades ago, to not understand pinball at all, and thus to gravitate toward video games. Pong and Space Invaders were trivial to learn. I can easily relate to players who feel overwhelmed by complexity.

I agree that "users can experience it either way, as they desire", but what if their desire is in fact to understand the rules, and the game's complexity makes it hard for them to reach that desired level of comprehension? Yes, the game can be played without that comprehension, but that doesn't mean every player is satisfied with that.

Frankly, I think pinball could take some cues from video games, which tend to be better about "leveling up" the player gradually. For example, Rush could have had some intermediate stages where you could get to a "Cygnus X-1 light" mode by finishing one Time Machine multiball and Far Cry (IMHO the easiest of the two non-Time Machine multiballs to get to), or by finishing Working Man and Limelight, and making those the only two song modes available initially.

From a beginner player's point of view, having access to the other song modes just increases the likelihood that they will get into a mode where they can't accomplish anything, can't make any progress in the mode.

Using the video game paradigm, pinball machines tend to have a very "flat", "open world" rule set. Contrast this to video games that more often use challenges of increasing difficulty and "leveling-up" mechanics to only introduce new game mechanics to players when they've reached some basic mastery of simpler mechanics. As the games have gotten more complicated, the flat rule set becomes more and more problematic for beginner players.

I admit, there is value to each approach. Experienced players are going to get bored having to play through the basics each game, so you need some mechanism for letting them skip that (e.g. Tempest's starting-level choice when the player starts a game), and that adds complexity. And if your primary market is the experienced players -- which I suppose might be the case today, as pinball transitions more to a collector/aficionado-based industry rather than a casual gaming/arcade industry -- maybe it doesn't make sense to invest time and effort to cater to the beginners.

But that doesn't mean there's not value in at least looking at it from the beginner's point of view and not denigrating their own perspective as invalid when the beginners express a preference for a game that has a simpler ruleset.

I've said it before, but I guess to balance out all the negative comments, I'll mention it again: yes, the lower scoop protector probably does reduce the number of stray balls that get into that scoop. But I've found that it also increases the number of stray balls that get into the upper scoop or bounce over to the Far Cry lock targets or RUSH targets. For me, it's a wash.

As far as the loosening up goes, I'm not having that problem. It was installed by the factory, so maybe they tighten things down more than at-home service does, or maybe they used some Loctite or something like that.

I'd say for someone who already has a third-party protector installed, I wouldn't bother switching back to the OEM part. But likewise, I wouldn't personally bother switching from the OEM part that's already installed. I doubt it really has a significant difference on the overall game one way or the other.

My assumption is the only protection worth discussing at this point is the v3 vs third-party. But yes, I guess I should clarify that's the one I'm talking about. The first two attempts are widely understood to be insufficient.

As for whether wear could still be happening with v3, I don't see how it could be, since the bumpers are directly over the area of the playfield that would have been getting wear. The ball can't fit in the space between the bumpers and the scoop edges that were getting chewed up.

It's an inelegant solution to be sure, but it should be completely effective from a protection point of view. So the main question is how it affects gameplay and how it looks. Personally, I don't find that I care that much how it looks, but surely others have different opinions about that and can choose alternative solutions to suit their vision of what the playfield should look like.

My only point was that from the gameplay perspective, I feel it's a wash. It changes the gameplay, but neither for the better nor for the worse.

TBH, I think it's a toss-up. Given that you're going to have to do something, and given that all the various options do address the basic issue, it's going to come down to what you personally would prefer.

If it were me, I'd start with Stern and get them to send the v3 protector. If I recall correctly, they are sending those out to owners free. Not sure what if anything they're doing about installation for owners who don't want to/can't do the work themselves, but if they're willing to send your local distributor or a tech out to do the install, even better. Let them take care of it. But even if you have to do the install yourself, you're no worse off than if you'd gotten an aftermarket option, and it's what the latest revision of the game design has.

Some people love to modify their games, to personalize it or whatever. Other people don't. Which kind of person are you? That will have a lot to do with which option you choose.

Even if you don't plan to install the v3 protector, get Stern to send it to you anyway. Then if/when you resell the game, it's right there with the spare parts for the game in case the new owner prefers that.

Between the two aftermarket fixes, I also think it's a toss-up. The metal version has the advantage of looking more "stock". It's just a beefier version of the regular metal protectors, if I understand correctly. But that does mean that theoretically it could start to deform like the actual original stock part did, just taking a lot longer to succumb. I gather than the seller of the metal version has a great track record in the community and is known for standing behind their products.

On the other hand, the NinjaCamp option gives you the opportunity to pick your color, and there are several different color options that seem to go really nicely with the game playfield art. They don't look stock, but they do look really nice. In theory, the material they make the protectors out of (3D-printed thermoplastic polyurethane) should last for a long time, maybe forever, and should never itself damage the playfield. But only time will tell if these parts actually hold up as advertised. That said, I have the impression that the sellers will respond right away if you have any trouble at all with them, so it's a pretty risk-free way to go in that respect.

As far as whether to keep playing the game for now, I think you should be fine, but keep an eye on the current metal around the scoops. If you see it starting to deform at all, give the game a rest. You've got plenty of other games to play there anyway .

There's something wrong with your machine, or possibly your USB drive. USB update works fine on my machine on the right port.

I don't find that it's hard to time it. The only tricky thing is if you need both hands on the flippers, but otherwise, you can wait until the ball has actually drained before hitting the action button. There's a grace period from detecting the last multiball draining to when the mode actually ends. I've even hit the Mystery shot to extend the multiball after draining during the grace period.

I find the grace period long enough for me that if the last ball on the playfield is in any risk of needing some flipper persuasion, I can generally put the ball somewhere safe long enough for one of my hands to get to the button.

Yeah, I misjudge this once in a while, but I just chalk that up to the general randomness of pinball. It's not any worse than having a bad bounce, or in multiball having the balls all manage to find the outlanes all at once. Works out okay almost all the time (at least 80-90% of the time I'd say, but it's not like I'm actually keeping track).

So at least for me, I never add a ball with The Weapon until I literally have only one ball left on the playfield. (I definitely agree about the "traffic"...between hitting Mystery accidentally and having Time Machine upgrades adding another ball, there's already too much stuff going on for me to handle without me intentionally exacerbating the situation ).

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/the-official-rush-owners-club-1?tq=reed+switch&tu=

Define "need". The top left (outer) orbit doesn't need any help. But many people (myself included) report problems with ball detection in the inner orbit. There are three main approaches to this, and one of those approaches is indeed to install a reed switch. I think most people are buying the pre-made solution described many times in this thread, but you can also build the switch yourself using the information here: https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/diy-repair-20-10293-reed-switch (the thread is nominally about repairing an existing switch, but there are also posts and links about making one from scratch).

The other two approaches involve physically restraining the ball. One philosophy uses a clear plastic mounted over the ball lane to hold the ball down. You can cut the plastic yourself, or buy the parts from Pinside markets (e.g. https://pinside.com/pinball/market/shops/1167-gameroom-mods/07010-rush-upper-orbit-ball-retention-plastic, https://pinside.com/pinball/market/shops/1012-ulekstore/07204-upper-left-orbit-fix-for-rush-pinball, etc.).

Finally there are the 3D-printed parts that hold the ball down without covering the whole lane. I designed one myself; I'm not selling it, but you're free to download the model and print it yourself, or have a 3D-printing service print it for you. Details here: https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/the-official-rush-owners-club-1/page/194#post-7154941. Along the same lines are the NinjaCamp option; different design, but has the advantage that they will print it for you and send it to you (for a price, of course): https://pinside.com/pinball/market/shops/1326-ninjacamp-mods/06740-rush-inner-loop-assist-amp-soft-plunge-corrector

Glad to hear that! I think that the lane cover solution is probably the easiest for the average owner to DIY. The material is readily available and can be cut/shaped with tools most people already have on hand.

FWIW, the piece I designed, for 3D-printing, has been in service long enough now for me to have similar confidence in it. I've made that shot hundreds of times since installing it, and have not had a single missed ball.

I would similarly describe it as "almost invisible". I printed it in black, but it has a very thin profile viewed from the player position and is essentially unnoticeable, in spite of not having the benefit of being transparent as the lane cover does. The playfield plastic covers most of the part anyway. I would guess that printed in a gold or grey/silver color, to match either the game's plastic or the lane guide, would make it even harder to detect visually.

You might have a connection issue.

But also, I have found that the software occasionally cycles through states that cause weird ramp behavior. This seems to happen in situations where there is more than one qualifying state for the ramp being up (e.g. 1-2-3 record and an instrument). I'll hit a shot (which doesn't even need to be the ramp, e.g. if it's for the instrument), the ramp will go down, and then immediately go back up again.

Confusing the issue is that the callouts seem to get queued up, and so occasionally by the time the "Time Machine is ready!" callout is actually played, the qualifying condition has ended and the Time Machine actually is not ready (and the ramp is back down).

So before you start digging too deep into the problem, make sure there really is an inconsistency between the game state and the ramp state, and that the inconsistency isn't just a brief hiccup between state transitions.

FWIW, I started with the furniture felt. Was completely unsatisfied. I couldn't find a spot to put it where it worked smoothly, it often slowed the ball down too much, caused trouble with balls coming the other way (whether slow shots or ejected from Time Machine). So IMHO whatever you do, don't do that. Just go with one of the less hacky, intentionally-designed solutions.

I am of course partial to my own design, but it's pretty niche, since I'm not actually selling it, but instead just leaving it up to the individual to get it printed themselves. It's basically free for someone who already has a printer, but for everyone else they would probably prefer to just do business with one of the actual mod sellers.

Just noticed your location. Given the extra overhead of the international shipping, printing a part would be ideal. Any friends with a 3D printer?

If not, I'm sure there must be multiple makerspaces in Sydney where you could get the part printed. Also, it looks to me like your library system offers 3D printing services (which is awesome! I'm very impressed ). It looks very reasonable: https://www.cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au/library-information-services/request-3d-printing-service

Barring all that, I really do think just cutting a piece of clear plastic the right shape would be a perfectly reasonable option. And your library has laser cutting services too (again, very cool).

No doubt there were problems with my execution on the felt pad. But to me, that was precisely the issue. I didn't find any really detailed, impossible to misinterpret instructions for how to deploy it, and was not interested in lots of trial and error to figure it out on my own.

Owning a 3D printer myself, and having the engineering knowledge and competency with 3D design software, I knew that I could start with facts of the problem and design from the ground up a part to install that would a) be impossible to install incorrectly, b) would, at least in theory, completely solve the problem (it did), c) and do so without any negative side-effects.

Honestly, if I had a laser cutter, I'd probably have gone with the clear plastic lane cover. It's a much simpler thing to design and by all accounts works just as well. But you use the tools you have at hand, and for me 3D printing was a more direct path. Plus, the outer lane guide is just a bit taller than the ball itself, so there's still theoretically some room for the ball to move away from the switch. With the 3D printed approach, I could make the part push the ball down exactly as much as I felt was necessary to keep it close enough to the playfield, without being limited by the pre-existing geometry of the playfield parts.

I'm really glad that the felt pad solution has worked for some, but IMHO it is the worst of all options. It's just a kludge, that works almost just by coincidence. It does have the drawbacks you and I both mention, while the other options just do not.

And more power to the folks who want to try to eke out a living making parts for fixing/upgrading pins, but IMHO a community works best when people are willing to share knowledge. The clear plastic solution was already amenable to DIY (you can get the plastic at a hardware store, and just cut it with any appropriate tool to any shape that roughly covers the area), but 3D printing is a real thing these days and there wasn't anyone else sharing their designs, so I decided someone needed to do that, and that that person could be me.

Felt was fine before these other options existed, but I wouldn't suggest it to anyone now, since it's practically as easy to deploy at least one or the other of the other existing DIY solutions, without suffering the drawbacks.

So glad to hear that! Do you mind providing a little more detail: what material did you print with, and did you have any trouble getting it to fit?

That gold looks really nice. Great choice!

Not having access to multiple examples of the machine, the one thing I have a concern about is what degree of variation exists in the exact geometry of the outer guide for the lane that the part fits on. If you have any suggestions for how the fit might be improved, I'd love to hear them.

Cool. Good info. A whole mm is actually quite a lot in this context, given the clip should be making contact with the metal to avoid letting the piece work its way up and messing up my carefully tuned clearances. But sounds like there's some room for improvement one way or the other.

I do find the issue ironic, as PLA should shrink (just a teensy bit) less than the PETG I used, so if anything your print should have been a little taller than mine, assuming the only source of dimensional error would in fact be that shrinkage. I guess that suggests that either there's some variation in the height of the metal part (seems unlikely...looks like a ribbon of metal cut in a die), or our printer calibrations are slightly off as compared to each other.

We are actually using essentially the exact same make/model of printer (I have a MK3S+, which should be fundamentally identical to yours).

Of course, you did say you printed without supports. I wonder if there was just enough sag as a result to affect that dimension.

Now that it's installed, you probably don't want to fiddle with it any more, but if you do happen to take the part off again and can measure the height with calipers (at a minimum the total height from top to bottom, but also having the height of the section on either side of the clip would be useful too), that'd be helpful info for me to understand where the variation comes from.

(I admit, I am still unsure whether that clip is even needed...the part is designed to fit pretty tightly in the first place, so between the friction, the plastic on top of it, and the fact that the ball isn't hitting it directly head-on, I wonder if it would stay in place just fine without the clip.)

Well, anyway...I am thrilled to hear that you printed it and that it's doing its job for you. I'm very happy with all the one-off stuff I've printed to solve my household problems, but it's even cooler to be able to share.

Intriguing. Not what I expected at all.

The part is designed for that gap to be 18.6 mm. And the one I printed comes very close to that, at around 18.55 mm (close enough for gov't work ).

I figured if anything, your printed part would show a smaller gap, but it's considerably bigger (I mean, almost half a mm, which in context seems like pretty big difference to me). And yet, you say that's not enough room for the barb to clip and catch under the lane guide?

Dumb question: are you 100% sure you've pressed the part all the way down on the lane guide? Because of the friction involved, at least on my machine, it takes a pretty good amount of pressure to get it fully seated.

Because otherwise, I would have to conclude that the total distance/height on your lane guide part is at least a bit larger than mine, which would refute my theory that they are stamping those parts out in a die cutter. Or maybe they are, but there are multiple production lines for the part, and there's some variation on the die. Or maybe your machine is older than mine and they replaced the die sometime between making your part and making mine. Or...something else I didn't think of.

I admit, I'm not really sure whether I should try to make any changes at the moment. Maybe I'll wait for more feedback if some other people use it too, so I can get a better handle on what kind of variance we're looking at for the fit.

Thanks so much for providing that measurement though, and enjoy your now-working-better machine. (I admit, I still haven't tired of just shooting that inner loop over and over, now that it's working perfectly; at first it was just to try to test out the fix as much as possible, but I still get a thrill from seeing it work, and can't help myself. )

Ah, yup...that'd do it. Thanks for taking the time to track that down. Sounds like your lane guide is pretty much exactly the same as mine then. That bodes well for the machine production having enough uniformity that others will be able to also use the part as-is.

I have a suspicion that even without the clip engaging, it'll stay in place. That was a kind of "belt and suspenders" thing I added to the design, because I wasn't sure if it'd work without it. If you find otherwise, I'd love to hear about it though.

Basic economics. Any sensible company in any industry -- see e.g. motor vehicles, mobile phones, kitchenware, housing, whatever -- would be doing the same. You need a product line that covers the full range of the market, with the largest segment being the lowest end you can produce and still have a functional product, and then adding minor or even inconsequential features (e.g. toppers) for large increases in price.

They sell the most of the low end (if they don't, then they misjudged their market), but still capture all the money that the high end of the market is willing to spend.

Of course, a company that isn't actually manufacturing the high end of their product line fast enough (or at all) to sell it to those people has definitely goofed. The economic strategy only works if you can actually sell those parts of your product line. A little bit of anticipation may help sales, but too much delay and people just lose interest.

But yeah, I'm with you. You and I are not part of that market segment willing to spend every last dollar on every last feature available for a single pin. I agree, much rather spend that money on a whole other machine. I would expect in general that most of the sales for the topper will go to people with LE machines, and even some of those owners are going to view the extra cost as just a bit too far.

Common? No, I wouldn't say so. An indication there's something wrong you should investigate? Certainly.

I would start with checking all the cable connections. Power off the machine, go through everything and make sure everything's solidly connected.

Next, look for wire chafing. There are a few different places where people have found wires chafing on metal on, around, or under the playfield. If the chafing gets bad enough, it can cut through the insulation on the wire and short something out, causing all kinds of bad behavior. Honestly, this is a more likely candidate than a loose connection, but the former is easier to look for, so might as well start there.

The circuit boards (node boards) are less likely to fail, and if ones does, usually it'd just fail completely, disabling a bunch of stuff on the playfield. But you never know. So while you're looking at all the other stuff, look closely at all the different circuit boards to see if there's anything obvious, like a missing surface-mount component or somewhere it looks like things got too hot (i.e. charring).

Those are all the easy thing to look for. More in-depth diagnosis may or may not be something you want to do, but if not, you'll probably have to hire someone to work on the machine. AFAIK, Stern doesn't send techs out to deal with these kinds of problems (I've never heard of it happening...but I could be mistaken).

For what it's worth, sometimes you can find a problem just by being very perceptive about what's going on with the game when you play it. Any little light that flickers when it shouldn't, fails to turn on when it should, a slight variation in how the flippers respond, anything at all like that, can lead you directly to some intermittent problem. But I would check the obvious stuff first, especially things like connections and chafing, because those can turn into bigger problems, so trying to play the game to diagnose the problem might not be the best choice until you've ruled out those kinds of electrical issues.

Define "best".

Seems to me, the "best" one is the one you like the most.

(Btw, what a shame the time machine doesn’t change year - even a small lcd would have been cool. Wonder if it was originally there but taken out for cost).

Agreed. Though I can see why they would have bailed on that.

Still, seems like an enterprising person could put together a little circuit that monitors the status of the Time Machine's lamps, along with the flashing sequence of the ramp, and from that figure out when a new Time Machine multiball is starting and display on a little OLED screen an appropriate animation to go with the animation on the screen.

Somewhat harder would be adding an animation for the song modes (the circuit would have to also monitor the qualification lamps on the inserts), and for other three multiball modes. Bonus points for that.

I guess a different, more general but less invasive approach would be to monitor the sound output, use some kind of Shazam-like algorithm to detect which song is playing, and update the Time Machine display accordingly.

Of course, any of that is obviously a lot harder than just adding code and wires to the actual game. So it'd definitely have been better if Stern had just done it themselves. I guess eventually people will be hacking the game code and node boards themselves, and then that "easier" approach would be feasible.

I don't think it's a hardware problem, not the intermittent issue that is (there's a different issue with the board itself failing, which does make it confusing to try to keep track of everything).

I have seen the same thing on my machine. Clock minute hand just stops moving. Won't start again until the machine is rebooted. I think it was in the v1.0 notes that they said they had tried to fix the issue, in software. I'm still on 0.98, but it sounds like people with the newer versions are still seeing the problem.

This is the only one I have installed: https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/the-official-rush-owners-club-1/page/194#post-7154941

Haven't needed anything else.

All the games have the inner loop -- pro, premium, and LE -- and as far as I know, they all can potentially suffer from the "ball not detected" problem.

However, since the issue stems from the geometry of the lane guide, which allows the ball to ride up away from the playfield as it makes the turn, it's entirely possible that some machines were built that because of a slight difference in their precise manufactured geometry work just fine without any modification.

Alternatively, maybe the geometry problem stems somehow with the way the machines with the VUK dead-end shot are assembled, in which case none of the pro machines would be affected. I don't know anything at all about the fine details of pinball manufacturing, so I can't say one way or the other how plausible that theory might be.

(Though, I have to say, the pro machines seem to be the more common ones at pay-for-play locations, and if I were an operator I'd be pretty upset about a game that had a shot that is nearly impossible to make, especially when it's the one that boosts the bonus multiplier and is a mandatory shot for a few of the modes. That kind of thing would turn paying customers off pretty quick. That the issue doesn't appear to be on Stern's radar at all, never mind have they done anything to fix it, suggests that a large number of machines they made work just fine without any modification in this respect. But, who knows?)

You need to answer that for yourself. Everyone has their own opinion. It depends entirely on both the player and the pin.

For me personally, I find the shaker absolutely essential for Earthshaker. It's right there in the name! And it's a fabulously done component to the game. Similarly, I think the Stern Godzilla really needs it too.

But I would personally never put a shaker in my Rush game. To me, in that context it's entirely "gimmick" and not at all essential to the game. Yet, you will undoubtedly get replies to your post saying that the shaker is a must-have feature for Rush.

So, after you get both sides replying, you're still stuck not knowing what to do, until you decide for yourself what it is you like about shakers in general and whether you think it will add enough to your enjoyment of playing Rush pinball to justify adding it.

Congrats. I hope the knocker is working well for you! I probably wouldn't install one myself, but I can definitely see the appeal. The synthetic knocker from the speakers just isn't quite the same, is it?

I managed to get within spitting distance of 2B the other day (1.96B), and it was (only) the third time I made it to Book 1. Ironically, I beat Book 1 the first time, but have gotten the dreaded "Mission Compromised" message since then. Boooo....

And yet, even with all that, my best Time Machine year is only 2052. You got me on that by a year!

I wonder how comparable scores are from machine to machine anyway. My scores seem pretty middle-of-the-road, with several people beating mine handily, and one or two people not quite as high, and at least one person who's actually gotten to 2112, but how much are the lower scores from people who set their machine on "Hard" or otherwise making the game more challenging?

(The higher scores seem more believable to me, oddly enough, since I know there are lots of players better than I am, it makes sense to me that if I can, at least once in a while, score over 1B, those better players should be able to easily outdo my scores by billions. And I doubt people who set their game on "Easy" are going around telling everyone about their high scores, at least not without providing that context.)

Personally, I've got mine on "Normal", with the outlanes as tight as they go (and they still seem to vacuum balls up on a regular basis...so many shots just a little off seem to wind up aimed straight for them), and with the extra ball situation as generous as I can make it (i.e. replays are extra balls, max number of EBs as high as I can set them, that sort of thing). My hat's off to those of you good enough to play the game with the harder settings.

lol...in case anyone wasn't clear on what I was referring to about other players clobbering my pitiful scores. See above. You probably also have your machine set to the hard settings, with the widest outlanes. Fie on you!

Seriously though, congrats! I agree, the game is a good one to get into "the zone". I love the music, but I have to admit that when I've got a good ball going, I don't notice it as much, because my focus is on the play. I guess the music is just helping me tune out everything else. But the whole game just is awesome to get immersed in.

I had another good game (for me) today too. I fell short on a couple of goals -- didn't break my previous high score, though I got close, and I once again failed Book I, by just one shot this time -- but at least I got to 2062, beating my previous best by 10 years. More to the point, I think the whole game took over an hour -- yeah, I play slow, miss lots of shots, but at least I kept the balls in play -- and time just flew by. I had no idea it was so late when the last ball drained.

Ironically, I wasn't even intending to play Rush today. I was trying to get a good streak going on TAF, but I could barely break 100M on the game, lousy even by my standards, and I just walked away disgusted. Figured I'd play a few games on Rush as a consolation prize, just to enjoy the music and the variety of shots (I love TAF, but it does get a little repetitive).

Sounds like you finished Bastille Day.

The game prioritizes various sound effects and callouts. Even if they had the hardware to mix everything (which they might...I don't really know how much processing power their board has), it would be really distracting to have a lot of different stuff making noise at the same time. Ironically, while the Bastille Day song seems to take priority over any other mode song, I've found that the target hit sounds don't.

I'm relieved to hear I'm not the only fair-to-middlin' player around here.

I don't have any secret sauce, not being one of the reliably good players. But I can tell you that my own scores have improved with these things I've worked on improving in my game:

* First, fixing the inner loop made a huge difference. Not only do I enjoy the game better, it opens up bonus multipliers and other scoring opportunities that just didn't exist when the shot was busted. There are at least three different options for dealing with this; I don't think it matters much which one you pick, just that if your machine doesn't register those inner loop shots, you need to fix it.

* Then, shots, shots, and shots. Learning just where to flip to get the ball to go where you want is key. This takes practice and focus, and paying attention when you miss, to where you missed, and then adjusting the next attempt accordingly. The next level to this achievement is then refining your knowledge according to ball speed as it passes the flipper, which slightly affects the direction it will go.

* I've worked on all the shots, but the two big ones are the inner loop and the spinner. For one, these two shots just seem really fun to me, especially now that the inner loop is working. But for another, this is the combo that gets you the bonus multiplier. Later in the game, as your bonus climbs into the eight-digit range, multiplying it helps a lot.

* Learning to anticipate where the ball is going is also key. One major epiphany for me was when I realized that most of the time when the ball comes flying out of the pop bumpers, especially after a clean loop, it's heading toward my right flipper, instead of the left as I'd assumed. There are a number of geometries on the playfield that are counter-intuitive to me, where the ball is more easily handled by the flipper opposite to where I thought it would go.

* Trapping the ball. This is something I am generally not good at on any machine, but I'm working at getting better. I've found that by trapping the ball, I can produce more repeatable results, because I take the ball speed out of the equation (see the "shots, shots, shots" point ).

* Learn the skill shot! Work hard to learn the inner-loop/upper-scoop combo, because that doesn't just give you points, it boosts the game. I find the extended timers to be an especially valuable benefit. They get extended a lot, which I really appreciate. The ball saver especially, but I think there are other timers, like instrument bonus and whatnot, that get extended as well, and this all leads to more successful games. For something that is just a few seconds of any game.

* Nail those combos. Okay, so this is actually something I only know theoretically. I have been unable to consistently do accomplish this, or even come close. But the song mode scoring is boosted if you shoot a bunch of combos before you start the mode. The best I usually see is a 70-80% bonus, and that's rare for me. 20-30% is more typical. But as I understand it, this can reach up near the 5X scoring level, if you do it right. For my own scoring potential, I see this as a huge area where I could improve and see immediate benefits. Similarly, take shots before collecting scores that will boost those scores. Most the modes have this opportunity, where there's one key shot for the mode, but even after you qualify the shot, you can hit other shots on the playfield first to increase the scoring a lot.

* Strategize. Learn how to get the ball where you want. There's a technique called a "post pass", which I barely can do, and on Rush I haven't really figured it out. Seems like the right-side post above the flipper is a little too close for the usual timing to work. But when you get it right, in conjunction with trapping the ball, you can just move the ball from one flipper to the other. In the meantime though, at least look for how the shots connect. For example, if you're trying to make the left ramp shot, one way to do that is shoot from the right flipper for a clean loop and then to that shot. But another is to hit the spinner with the left flipper to get there. Being able to identify ways to position the ball for any shot, from either flipper, gives you a lot more control over the order you hit things, and whether you hit things.

* And finally, never give up! For one, I've gotten a lot less timid about shoving the machine around a bit when it looks like the ball's going to just barely go the wrong way. Near an outlane? Nudge it. Heading down the middle, but maybe just a hair closer to one of the flippers? Nudge it. And while it's rare, I have even had the ball go past the flipper but then bounce back off the metal around the trough entrance and go back into play. Never assume the ball is lost!.

Okay, I'm sure a fully developed strategy guide would have even more stuff. But that's what I can think of at the moment that has made the most difference for me personally since getting this game. I have to admit, I've been technically collecting pins since I got my first one over 25 years ago, but there's been a big gap due to "various life issues". Rush is the game that has gotten me back to being excited about the hobby, which has inspired me to both start taking better care of the other machines I have, as well as to be more diligent about improving my ability to play. It's been a lot of fun!

I don't get how the Scotch tape helps, but hey...if it works for you, that's great. I don't find it sad at all! The important thing is to get something there so the inner loop works right.

lol. Boy, can I relate. To all of it.

On the topic of Bastille Day, I did mention some time ago, I do think that the hurry up rules need fixing. The countdown should pause any time the ball is being held or is hitting switches not in the lower third of the playfield. They can temporarily suspend that rule during multiball if they like.

That would make the hurry up more fair, and consistent with hurry up rules on other games.

This business of hearing the countdown while the ball is stuck in the scoop is annoying!

Yeah, but could she yell it with the same smirky laugh that Alex does? He gets just the right touch of condescension when he says that. (Actually, if I recall correctly, Alex leaves out the "hoser" and Geddy doesn't laugh...but they both did that callout.)

I sure do love the callouts in this game. So many, so much fun. I don't even mind when they are being mean to me.

Nice find. That wire tie did look way too tight.

But have you replaced the wires too? From your photos, it does not look like the wire insulation was compromised in a way that would've caused a short. So the only way the tie being too tight would be a problem is if it damaged the conductors in the wire itself, causing an intermittent disconnect. Disconnecting components while they are powered being, of course, a known way to quickly blow up node boards.

Given the apparent damage to the wires, I wouldn't trust those. Stern should send you replacement connections for that (which may involve sending a whole new motor, given the way they are connected), along with the node board. And probably a good idea to go through the rest of the wiring closely to see if you find any other places where the person on the factory floor put the tie on too tight.

In general, it fires any time a credit is awarded. You can configure each high score level -- GC, 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th -- to award a variable number of credits, and the knocker will fire once for each credit that is awarded. So if you configure GC to award 5 credits, you get 5 knocks; if the 4th high score is configured to award 1 credit, you get just 1 knock. And so on.

Match only ever awards one credit (per player, as noted below by @Big_Whoopin), so you only get one knock (per player) for that. Not configurable.

"artificially inflating your total game score" by what metric?

Every setting that affects difficulty will "artificially" either deflate or inflate scores? So what? If we're not supposed to "artificially" deflate or inflate our scores, why bother including those settings in the game at all?

Philosophically, I buy my pins to have fun with them. And I have fun by getting to play longer games. Philosophically, I also find it pointless to have the game hand out rewards that do nothing, i.e. credits, tickets, whatever. The only thing that's useful to me for a game set on free play in my home is another ball during the game.

I even go so far as to disable the automatic increase in replay award thresholds, because having the threshold move a) makes one high score not comparable to another, and b) really annoys other family members or friends who come over and play and find that even that first extra ball is way beyond their reach.

I get why that feature is there. For a money-making pin, you want the pin to adapt to the players playing it, so the best players aren't hogging all the time and keeping other people from dropping quarters into it. But there's no such concern about that at home, so why would I let someone's financial interests that have nothing to do with me limit how I set up my game?

Given the scores you've posted here, it's clear your skill as a player are well beyond the average duffer. I understand why at your level, getting extra balls for score milestones would be unwanted. After all, I don't know how much time you spent playing when you got that 6B game, but I'm sure it wasn't short and you probably don't want the game putting you in a position where you'd be stuck playing for 90-120 minutes on the same game, with it giving you up to four extra balls.

But for me, while I have gotten nearly to 2B, that's rare, and I have plenty of games where I don't even get to 200M. I set my machine to hand out an extra ball every (approx.) 200M points. When I'm on a roll, this is low enough to allow me to have more fun with the game, experiencing more of the modes, but is high enough that if I'm not really on top of things, or the game is just being mean that day, it doesn't help at all.

All of my games are set up to give extra balls instead of credits, and IMHO that's exactly how a home machine should be set up for an average player. For people who are good enough that they could probably place if not win most tournaments they entered (and I suspect this includes you), well...those folks are playing on a whole other level and it doesn't surprise me at all that they'd want their machine set up differently.

And for what it's worth, I think it's well and good if people want to share their high scores, but personally I take every such sharing with an enormous grain of salt. There are lots of ways to post a really high score, including just taking the glass off and fiddling with the switches. I'm not saying folks are doing that, but there's a reason that Stern halves their IC stats for games played on free-play/non-operated machines. There are way too many variables for me to consider one score comparable to another, and that cuts both ways. Even some really high scores, are probably low compared to what that person could get on my machine, and likewise there are going to be scores that in spite of being low, might actually be too high compared to what that person could do on my machine.

It makes for good "hangar talk", but it's not really anything I concern myself with too much. People get the scores they get, on the machines they play, which are set up the way they like, and as long as everyone's having fun, the actual number is pretty pointless to me. So if someone's machine is handing out extra balls and inflating scores? Meh...who cares?

I summarized last time this often-asked question came up:

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/the-official-rush-owners-club-1/page/202#post-7184410

The one I designed has been 100% -- as in literally 100% -- since I installed it over a month ago. Not a single missed ball. You can print it yourself, get a friend to, take it to your library (many have 3D printing services), a UPS store (if you happen to be near one that has 3D printing services), or send it out to one of the online services like Xometry or Shapeways. More details at https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/the-official-rush-owners-club-1/page/194#post-7154941

If you have your own 3D printer or a friend who will do it for you, the direct cost is negligible, around 25-50 cents depending on what material you use and where you bought it. If you take it to a service, the cost to print my design will be somewhere between a bit less than, up to about the same as, the third-party retail options (when I looked at the various services, it looked like it'd cost around $10-15 USD).

Just to clarify:

I'm not selling anything. And the part I'm offering isn't the clear plastic cover. I designed a 3D-printable part and am sharing the design to anyone who wants to use it, free of charge. The only cost would be whatever they spend to actually print it, either themselves (very cheap) or through some service (still cheaper than third-parties selling alternative options).

My part holds the ball down to the playfield closer than a clear plastic cover for the lane would, and so will necessarily work in more cases than the cover would. It's possible that in some cases, the switch is also misadjusted and requires a (very slight) tweak to make it more sensitive. To ensure no detrimental effect on ball speed, I intentionally left about 0.1 mm of clearance between the ball and the playfield surface. That way, the ball is always being held laterally by the lane guide, not by my part. So if the switch is literally 0.1 mm out of adjustment, even my part could fail to help.

But generally speaking, if the switch triggers when the ball rolls over it sitting on the playfield (e.g. if you roll it over by hand, or you see at least some situations in game where it registers), the part I designed will work.

The plastic cover and magnetic switch options have been reported by others to not always work. This varies from machine to machine; some people say they work 100%, others say they still miss the occasional ball. Given the cost, I personally would be hesitant to buy either solely to fix this problem, since you might wind up having to spend money on something else anyway.

On the other hand, the magnetic switch will eliminate the problem where a really slow ball rolling backwards through the lane might get hung up. That happens to me every few weeks, and while I don't really mind that much, the magnetic switch would be guaranteed to eliminate that problem. If that's an issue you want fixed, you might as well go with the magnetic switch first; if it improves the ball detection issue enough as well, then you've got two birds with one stone.

I haven't been following the NinjaCamp success rate closely. From the few photos I've seen of that part, it does not look like it was really designed from the ground up for this purpose, and so might also have varied success depending on the machine. But a) none of those photos are very clear, so my impression may be wrong, and b) I've seen plenty of reports that it does the job, and so if I did not own a 3D printer myself, I would probably go ahead and try theirs, since it comes with customer support and (I assume) a refund policy, especially if I were already ordering any of their other products (the "exit stage left" lamp-repeater looks particularly appealing, even if by my own standards seems overpriced...I am a cheap so-and-so though).

I'm happy to answer questions about my part, and to try to help people print it and get it installed, but obviously I don't feel under any obligation to do so and any cost someone might bear printing the part are going to be sunk, whether they get it to work or not. I doubt they'd have any real trouble -- I've gotten precious little feedback on my part, but what I have gotten has been positive -- but I'm only providing the design on an as-is basis, with any support being provided strictly at my own convenience.

FWIW, this NY-based shop says they will be able to start shipping Rush Golden Ale to US customers in December.

I wonder if that means it will be more widely available in other markets too.

If someone just wants to reduce tension, why wouldn't they just use a slightly longer band? Seems like that would make more sense than changing the geometry of the playfield.

"I get an error" isn't a useful problem description. You need to be specific about what the error says. "file is too large" is helpful. Generally when people get that, they are confused about how to use the downloaded file.

The Stern site provides the update as a .zip file. But the .zip file is not what goes on the USB drive. You need to open the .zip file and copy to the USB drive the individual files that are inside the .zip file.

Also, some have reported having trouble using USB drives larger than 16GB with the Stern machines, so if you have a USB drive that's only 16GB, that's preferable. If you only have a larger USB drive, you'll need to partition it (using your PC's disk management tools) so that the partition on the USB drive is only 16GB (leave the rest of the drive unused).

Thanks for coming up with this! I'm sure there are lots of owners who will find this useful.

And extra kudos for sharing the STL. I think most will appreciate the added value of having the parts made for them and getting a kit that includes the double-sided tape. But it's awesome you're willing to treat the community as, well...a community and provide the DIY option for those with the capability and interest.

For those, not really, since they are also positional. The red is always the upper numbers, the orange the lower.

The song modes are the ones that would be problematic for some people with colorblindness. It will depend on the severity and specifics of their condition. In some cases, they will still be able to distinguish the colors from each other. But yeah, for those who can't, being able to match up the records -- by locking in a color then iteratively hitting the RUSH targets to rotate other records to the same color before they make the shot -- is going to be harder or impossible.

But to be honest, that's probably a really minor part of the game for most people. Even in Ray's video, he didn't spend a lot of time trying to match up the records, and for most of us, attempting to do so is just going to lead to frustration and the ball draining before we can even start the mode.

The game doesn't present song modes you've already completed, so even a colorblind person can just keep shooting lit shots and eventually work their way through the game, just like anyone else would. They just will have less advance knowledge of what song mode they're working toward at any given time.

Yeah, I'm aware. But knowing that I could get a lot more points that way, doesn't do anything to help me actually accomplish that.

I suppose there's at least one person out there who is both colorblind and a really awesome pinball player, and yeah...for that person, the color-centric design probably really sucks. I would be the first to agree that pinball designers ought to think more about accessibility and maybe provide alternative indications so that colorblind players can play on an equal footing.

But I would also be the first to admit the audience for those kinds of accommodations, probably pretty small.

Good summary. In addition: in the case of a tie, the left-most locked-in color wins.

FWIW, in addition to the official rulesheet on the Stern web site, there is this wiki version:
http://tiltforums.com/t/stern-rush-rulesheet/7409

IMHO, it is actually better. It has more detail, and includes a comment section where other insights can be found.

Agreed, lots of funny ones, and I am still very once in a while hearing a one brand new to me.

I like Geddy's La Villa Strangiato callout, but Alex's kicks it up a notch, adding "...I handled all the the's".

But I do think the ones I enjoy the most are the deprecating ones, like Dobler mentioned to start us on this topic again. They are hilarious and really take some of the sting out of the bad balls.

Am I the only one who (up until now) never noticed that in addition to the mode-specific completed-goal information, there is in fact a linear progress bar, right at the top of the song mode pane on the display?

I don't recall seeing any mention of this in release notes, but I'm still on 0.98 and I have the progress bar, so it's been there at least a couple of months, probably longer.

Back in July, it seems like it wasn't there. Some folks here even commented on the lack, e.g. https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/the-official-rush-owners-club-1/page/149#post-6993840 and https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/the-official-rush-owners-club-1/page/149#post-6993410. That second one even has a "screen shot" and I'm pretty sure it shows that there was no progress bar when that photo was taken.

Not really sure what you're asking exactly. But...

Lots of photos online you could look at. Including https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/the-official-rush-owners-club-1/page/118#post-6916215, https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/the-official-rush-owners-club-1/page/119#post-6917663, https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/the-official-rush-owners-club-1/page/119#post-6917767, and of course the Stern service bulletin (https://sternpinball.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Stern-RushScoopAdvisory.pdf).

Or you can just hire it out. There are lots of mail-order services (e.g. Xometry), and many people have local services available, either at their library, maker spaces, or laser-cutting businesses.

Existing products seem reasonably priced to me, but for those who still prefer DIY for whatever reason, those options do exist even if you don't already have the hardware.

That depends on the service. For example, I designed a fix for the Rush inner loop, it's cheaper to get it printed from Xometry or Shapeways than to buy the alternative design offered by sellers here.

Alternatively, some of the "services" are non-profit entities, like libraries, or offer DIY access cheaper than a service would, like many maker spaces do.

Or maybe you just prefer using a material that's slightly different from the retail offerings, or you'd like a slightly different profile, and so saving money isn't even the point.

My point is (i.e. your statement that I disputed) you don't need to buy a laser cutter to have access to one, and there are plenty of scenarios where going that route is preferable to just buying the part. I get that DIY threatens your business model (generally...not sure if you sell this kind of thing specifically), but let's not contrive false narratives. If someone wants to cut their own protectors, just let them.

Now who's posting without a clue?

Whether you care about the threat to your business model is immaterial. I never said you cared, but the fact that DIY could be a threat is indisputable. Likewise, I never said you "have skin in the plastic protectors game". In fact, if you'd bothered to read my post, you'd see I specifically noted that I wasn't aware of any specific product you sold along those lines.

First you wrote that someone would need to buy a Glowforge or similar to make laser-cut pieces, and then when I disputed that, you moved the goalposts and decided you instead wanted to argue about whether it was worthwhile to use a third-party service to do it. All of these statements seem aimed at discouraging people from DIY approaches, and they all make the false judgment that DIY is pointless. That certainly seems like a false narrative to me.

And yes, I'm well aware of your contributions to other DIY efforts. Which makes your negativism and hostility to the idea in this particular scenario all the more bewildering. Why so strident about discouraging other people from cutting their own protectors?

Interesting. Would the app work with the phone face-down?

Alternatively, a lot of people use a case for their phone, and most cases surround the camera protrusions, so that'd probably keep the phone flat to the playfield.

And of course, barring all that, it would be easy to print a sheet on a 3D printer (preferably TPU for the grippy texture) that served the same purpose a case would. Just a flat rectangle with a cutout where the camera stuff sticks out.

I doubt it. Though, since I'm not 100% clear on the failure mode for the Node 10 boards, I can't say for sure.

In the case of the new nVidia card, there are multiple power lines; ideally, there's just be two large gauge wires rated for the total current that the card needs. But because of how PC power supplies are designed, nVidia's card (and video cards generally, when they need a separate power connector, which is pretty much any decent 3D card these days) uses multiple connections to the power supply. The video card doesn't care which wires the power's coming from; on the card, they are all connected anyway. So if one disconnects, the card continues to draw the same amps, which overloads the remaining connected wires still providing current.

I don't have the impression that with the case of the Node 10 boards, there are multiple power wires going to the board. The overload on the chip seems to be caused by the momentary loss of connection, which seems to divert current either the wrong direction or to the wrong place (this is where I'm unclear on the specifics), which immediately fries the chip. Completely disconnecting the power for the board all at once seems to be sufficient to break the board, while the nVidia thing requires at least a little bit of time for the wires to get hot and overheat.

(In the nVidia situation, why the PC power supply is willing to pump more current out the rail that remains connected than the wires are rated to handle, I don't know...seems like a design flaw there to me; should be a circuit breaker or some other kind of auto-shut-off or current-limiting device in the circuit. Sure, nVidia might have provided faulty connectors, but the wires are of a known gauge and power capacity, so for the power supply to not be designed to not start a fire when the capacity is exceeded, that seems pretty lame too.)

I am curious to hear how that works. All of the people so far who have told me they installed my fix, have seen the loop work 100%, no misses. But I believe they all also still have the mechanical switch.

I don't know that much about the magnetic switch, and so I am interested in finding out if it can register balls which are simply fast, even when they are down on the playfield where they belong. The mechanical switch has some inherent lag in it with respect to its return to its open state after the ball goes by, and so allows for more detection time even if the ball is really fast. But the magnetic switch (presumably) is closed for a shorter period of time when the ball passes. It's still mechanical inside -- the reed has to move -- but there's so much less mass involved, it probably responds more precisely to the ball, and so could reopen sooner on faster balls.

Anyway, that's a long way of saying that with my fix installed correctly, you can be sure the ball is down on the playfield, so that's an interesting experiment to see if the speed of the ball also plays a part in detection, when it comes to the magnetic switch.

I'm hoping it doesn't, because I think from a long-term reliability point of view, as well as eliminating those rare moments when a slow, back-rolling ball gets hung up on the mechanical switch, are reasons to also prefer the magnetic switch. I look forward to hearing how it goes!

Interesting. I'd just assumed that without the mechanical interference, the magnetic switch would eliminate the type of issue. But now that you mention it, I can see how, since the magnetic switch involves a high-strength magnet right at the playfield to create the magnetic field that the reed switch responds to, that magnet could also interfere with the ball's movement.

I'm guessing it happens less with the magnetic switch than with the mechanical one. On the factory switch, I'd guess I see that happen every 40 or so plays? Haven't really been keeping count, doesn't really happen that often, but it does happen. I've seen it probably 3 or 4 times so far.

I just grab the ball with my hand and drop it in the dead-end VUK. It won't fire until I close the coin door and I'm ready to get the ball back, and it's right there next to where I got the ball from.

Do you have to use the magnetic retriever because you have the clear plastic over the lane? I guess that's another reason to go with one of the solutions that doesn't cover the lane, makes getting the ball back easier if it gets stuck there.

That's great. If it is literally 100% of the time, that suggests that for the other person to whom I was responding, once they add my part to hold the ball down on the playfield, the ball registering 100% of the time for them as well. I look forward to them confirming that.

Were you getting missed balls in the inner loop before installing the magnetic switch? If so, that suggests that either the problem wasn't quite as bad on your machine (i.e. the ball wasn't getting as high off the playfield), or that people with the magnetic switch might find there's some way to adjust the exact height of the switch a bit to reach 100% success, if they are not already seeing 100%.

Given that (apparently) there are numbers of machines out there that don't have a problem in that lane at all, minute geometry variations probably exist, so either possibility seems plausible to me.

lol...well, okay then. Carry on.

Is that a bit of felt on the lane wall? Or am I just imagining that? Seems like if you've got another mod on the lane, it's hard to say that the magnetic switch would in fact be 100% reliable without any other modification having been made to the lane.