Ball Baron is offering a cool deal exclusively for the TNA community this weekend......(shh, don't tell anyone)

Buy a minimum of 20 Ninja pinballs, the shiniest ball on the planet, for $1.65/ea (normally $1.95/ea).

1. Add at least 20 Ninja balls to your cart:
https://ballbaron.com/product/ninja-super-shiny-chrome-pinball-g10/
2. Apply coupon code "tnaweekend" at checkout. Enjoy!

Offer expires Sun 4/15/18 @ 11:59pm EST.

Sorry if this was asked before.....is this game sold out? Can you still buy one? If so, where? Hard to find disty info on their website.

Anyone wondering on build numbers, they are shipping 320s this week. I'm in the 340s and just had to send my payment for shipment in the next 30 days. IT'S COMING!

Exact same issue on mine near the scoop, except more scuffed up (and the scoop side damage was also present upon receipt - though it doesn't matter as this scoop gets destroyed very quickly). Pretty disappointed. Mine arrived last Saturday. Playfield was heavily scratch up with swirl marks everywhere - whoever is waxing these playfields before shipment is using an abrasive cloth. White wax remnants all over the place. And then this. I hate to rag on Spooky because I really like the game but I figured a small boutique shop would do better than this.

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Yes sir. Like I said, mine arrived with much of that damage already there. And if they're going to put that many games in on it before shipping you'd think they'd have caught the fact that my upper flipper was binding and sticking up most of the time. But I digress.

I can appreciate Scott's attempt to put a Mantis style protector there but it sits too low (to make the shot easier to make) so it does not protect the hole much. Ideally, if a mfg is going to do factory-cliffys, what would be proper would be to design a cliffy that has a down lip around the whole protector. The mfg then grooves a thin channel around the hole that the down lip fits into, thus totally eliminating the issue of the cliffy lip being raised slightly higher than the pf. In this scenario it would be perfectly level with the pf.

How does this rank amongst you more experienced TNA players? Only had mine for 5 days so not sure if this is good enough to post.

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Most clear coats chemically cure. Time and temperature are biggest factors. Humidity is not as relevant.

Seriously, you and TimeBandit should get together and make...like...the best game over....your talents + dedication to constant improvement is killer.

Want to avoid all the problems everyone else is having? When you receive your game.....and I know this is going to be super tough.....don't play it. Wait a month. That's right, wait a month. The primary issue here, and I've confirmed this with Spooky, is that the playfields are clear coated only about 2-3 weeks prior to customer receipt. Playfields, regardless of who made them, should be allowed 6-8 weeks to cure, at minimum. That isn't the case here.

When you don't wait proper cure time, you get a playfield that scratches very easily, chips everywhere, and dimples where it otherwise would not. This is exacerbated by the fact that every manufacturer is using inferior clear coats these days. All of them. Compare a playfield clear coated with PPG/Omni with 1000 plays to one put out by JJP, CGC, Spooky, or Stern (though Stern's are by far ahead of the rest) and the same number of plays (or fewer!) and the difference is remarkable. Source: I did this.

All playfields will dimple. The difference is those playfields that use high quality wood and/or clear coat (JJP uses the former) will have fewer dimples than those that do not (Stern's wood from Iron Maiden on is absolute junk).

Do a comparison between a DILE with 500 plays and an Iron Maiden with 250. The DILE will have far fewer dimples. IMDN will have hundreds of dimples, many shallow because the wood gives easily even for light airballs.

I'm not going to argue with you but there are substantial differences between playfields and clear coats and these differences have an impact on in the amount of dimpling the playfield has. I restore machines as a hobby. I've seen it all. I've worked on playfields from everyone (except Spooky). There are huge differences. New Stern's are going to dimple like crazy because their wood is cheap, light, soft, and crap. A new JJP won't have this problem. It will still dimple as all pfs will, but it won't resemble the moon after a few hundred plays.

Cure time affects dimples as well. As an experiment, I cleared a Dr. Dude which was completely flat from dimpling over 27 years. I waited exactly 3 weeks and then played it regularly. Next, cleared a TAF the exact same way (also perfectly flattened from 26 years of dimpling), but waited 2 months to play it.

The result? Across roughly the same # of plays Dr. Dude has lots of dimples. My TAF has about 15 even though the chair creates tons of airballs. "[Gasp!] But how?? The wood was already flattened! How could it dimple more??" Because the clear coat also dimples....not just the wood. Quality makes a difference. Cure time makes a difference.

Do everyone's operator test "forward" and "back" (the two in the middle) barely ever work? Mine almost never do anything and I often have to use the flippers in the menu. Can't do this for volume though. Not sure if I have bad button or what. They are wired properly and nothing seems loose.

Wait, what? Do not agree, at all. "Best in the business" based on what? JJP's got the highest quality wood. Stern uses the best clear coat and the only one that doesn't chip easily (though their wood from IMDN onward is a joke), and CGC is a decent combo of both. This thread alone details in finite detail how "not best" these playfields are. Do they suck? No. But are they the best? Not quite, IMO.

I applaud Charlie and co for starting a pinball company and for releasing some really fun games. I'm not going to defend jerk customers, but in an established industry like pinball, learning and utilizing best practices leads to far fewer situations like this playfield episode. I love my TNA but I do question some of the odd decisions that were made that could have been avoided simply by watching what others do....some examples:

1) Why are the lockbar and rails so sharp? Aren't battle-tested lockbars and rails available off the counter? And if you want to make them yourself, can't you follow the example of every other manufacturer, and make sure they are deburred?
2) Stern's displays have always sat an angle with the top further back, to reduce glare and improve color display contrast. But TNA's display faces head on, and when combined with a low-budget screen, produces poor contrast and color. Tilting the screen even 5 degrees back using washers greatly reduces this issue. Something Spooky still isn't doing at the factory for some reason.
3) The playfields are not given time to cure properly, which results in both chipping and scratch marks all over the place on NIB machines from them wiping them down at the factory - which you cannot do if the playfield hasn't cured yet. The reason Charlie hasn't "released" the reason why all those playfields are chipping is because the reason is quite simple: they didn't cure properly.

I get it, Charlie. Pinball is hard. But it doesn't have to be quite as hard if you take cues from established players.

I want to be crystal clear that this is not an assumption. I've restored and clear coated many playfields over the years and encountered every issue there is and over time you figure out how and why things happen, whether it be fish eyes, orange peel, chipping, ghosting, etc. If your playfield is prepped properly and cleared with proper time given to cure - at least 4 weeks - you will not have this issue. Full stop.

Scott - is there a reason the 1.3 beta is....still in beta? Are you adding more stuff to the final release? Still not rock solid?

Cool man. Guys like you and Lyman are passionate about their games, and we appreciate it. He's still updating Metallica and the game came out like 5 years ago.

TheNoTrashCougar Bug report - In our league, a player tilted with one ball locked. The Danesi Lock® dropped the first and third drop targets to let the ball out, but not the middle one, leaving the ball trapped.

At first I thought the knock-down coil might have an issue because the ball search ran 10 times, and I even shook the machine to ensure the opto sees the ball. No luck. I rebooted the machine and it immediately saw the locked ball and dropped all the targets to let it out. Not sure if you knew of this bug...

@thenotrashcougar - version 1.3.0. Drops test out fine.

This can also occur if a bunch of coils are firing at once. Happened all the time when the reactor core switches were too close together and a single ball hit with make them rapid pulse a bunch of times (before latest beta). The flippers would either not fire at all or be weak sauce.

He's lying. The dip-switches are tattooed on his right arm, right below the Dr. Dude tattoo.

Scott - www.tnapinball.com is not a working URL.

Scott spend as much time as you want on the lighting. What a canvass you have to work with - every single lamp is RGB....think of the possibilities...

- Colors getting more intense as reactor gets more unstable (or as more destroy targets are hit)
- GI turning red fading in and out after reactor counter reaches 100 until reactor is destroyed
- Lighting effects for hitting drop targets (jackpots) during multiball (I don't think there an effect already? never noticed...but for the points these give out, it should be more prominent)
- All lighting blue to white GI explode effect like on Dialed In big bang (the one lighting effect they absolutely nailed) when reactor destroyed
- Increase blinking speed of important lights (this one probably doesn't require a PhD in pinball lighting but would be helpful for novices - guests often don't know they need to hit the Start reactor scoop)

Sure, Rick and Morty is cool and spend the time you need to on it, but it's just 750 people. On the other hand, think of the hundreds of millions of people that will experience TNA and surely you'll agree that's where the attention should be.

I've found that changing the shaker power and the trough kickout power (on older code, at least) don't seem to take effect right away after you set them. I forget but either requires you to play a ball or power cycle.

Scott - bug report in case it's not known yet. I started a game, and then while on first ball, went into test mode. While in test mode before I even chose anything, the game started a ball search and also fired the shaker motor (which, with the new super heart-pounding "low" setting, scared the sh*t out of me). It kept doing it in cycles until I rebooted the game. Never had that happen in two years so must be the new code?

Scott.....does TNA compensate for a broken shooter lane switch? Had ours go during league the other day and all night plus the next night the game continued to not know if a ball was in the plunger and would just let ball saves sit there rather than autoplunge....not sure if the time to mark the switch bad is really long. I'd suggest dropping it....that's one switch that the game knows when it should be active and should be able to rule it as broken quickly.

Sooooo.......turned out it was the shooter coil that got disconnected (cold solder joint). The switch was fine. But I do wonder why the shooter lane switch is necessary for the game to know if the ball made it out of the trough.....What are the trough switches for then? Isn't the trough supposed to be the arbiter of how many balls are in play? So proper logic would be: 1) trough kicks ball out....2) shooter lane switch not triggered....3) trough optos/switches show 3 balls....4) shooter lane auto-shoots if the game situation calls for it.....5) No activity for [x] seconds....6) Trigger ball search....7) After [x] ball searches, kick out a chase ball. My point is the game shouldn't shit the bed over a bad shooter lane switch but the way you're describing it, it does....

I respectfully disagree. As someone who does this for a living - programming AI to handle and recover from error conditions, the trough having multiple switches is an advantage, not a weakness. In the trough, every ball passes by every switch. So by merely counting switch clicks in the trough, the CPU can calculate how many balls are actually in the trough. Only if the last switch in the trough is faulty does this introduce a problem. Even then, the game can eventually figure it out by monitoring outlane drains, and realizing the ball is draining but the trough is not seeing it. Is it perfect? No. Does it keep the game earning? Yup.

This isn't novel. Basic AI has been in pinball for decades. From TAF monitoring and adjusting Thing Flips, to MM not triggering Merlin if it hits a pop-bumper within x seconds, to the use of and recovery of chase balls when a ball gets stuck, there are many avenues to avoid problems using software. My guess is that this is simply more work than a designer wants to program for, and that's fine.