AFM: sometimes bottom lane lights don't change when right (and probably left, but I'm not that coordinated) flipper button is pressed. So to move the unlit lane 3 to the right, I have to press 3 or 4 times (depending on whether or not the bug happens). Latest 1.13 ROM

Can't believe I missed this thread when it started...

A different model would be for PPS to set a certain target amount (like kickstarter) for each game. If pledges meet or exceed that amount, the code is released as open source, with a license/disclaimer absolving WMS/PPS of any responsibility for burnt coils, blown fuses, house fires, or World Wars that might start as a result. This model appeals to me because:

- WMS/PPS still gets some good money without having to pay for programmers, deal with schedules, or worry about piracy. This might even be the most profitable route due to the extremely low costs.
- This community is organized enough with enough motivated and talented coders that I think we'd get quality ROMs,
- The improved ROMs could keep coming indefinitely. Start with bug fixes, but move on to brand new modes, better graphics, etc.

There are some details that we'd want to work out (it would be nice to know there's a talented programmer willing to work on your game/games, and we might want a way to "tip" whoever does the work on the code), but I think a lot of pinsiders would pledge a lot of money to fix the bugs in their machines, and even more money if they could have an option of deeper/different rule sets - it would be like getting a new pin.

Also I think this would allow more total games to be bug-fixed/enhanced.

I was wrong about this - there's no ROM bug. I assumed there was just one flipper input to the CPU (in which case this problem would have to be a software bug, since the flippers worked correctly), but apparently there are different optos for flipper and lane advance, and my lane advance opto was intermittent.

So if this "bug" is on anyone's list, please remove it....

A few other L-2 bug fixes/suggestions:
1) Fix the "Secret Mania" Easter egg so starting it does not screw up the rest of the game.
2) Free Ride ball saves should not increase RPM. With default game settings, I once scored something like 77M (iirc) without touching a flipper - multiple free rides per ball started the supercharger mode.
3) Handling a faulty up/down ramp: The code knows if the ramp is stuck high and won't go down. If it's stuck up and LOCK is lit, have a loop from left orbit or upper flipper count as a LOCK. That way you could still get multiball even if the ramp is stuck.
4) I know this isn't a bug, but since you're in the code...see what you can do to improve the animations. For example, if you look through the existing L-2 ROM, there is already one awesome unused sequence where the girl asks for a ride and the driver coolly turns his head towards the player as if to say "oh yeah..." Play that occasionally! There's enough room in the ROM to make a lot of the graphic sequences cooler than just inverting the colors on the screen every few frames to generate "excitement". This was one of the earliest DMD designs (1992) - I think it could look a lot better if it was redone knowing what the programmers knew by 1998...

I'd pay good money for a ROM that did this, and there are a lot of Getaways out there...

Sounds like you're not familiar with linux, MythTV, or tens (hundreds?) of thousands of other software projects that people individually or collectively do for free. And how about Visual Pinball - who do you think created that and draws & codes all the playfields?

Motivation is usually:
- It's something they are passionate about so they make it and they want to share
- It's something they need so they make it and they want to share
- If you're a professional programmer, it's great to have some examples like this for your portfolio when looking for work.
- Probably lots of other reasons, I'm not a sociologist/psychiatrist.

To get even closer to exactly what I'm talking about, here's a personal example: I had a PC with an Asus K8N-E motherboard with on-board SATA ports. The SATA chip (Sil3114) (the hardware) supported 2TB drives, but the K8N-E BIOS used older SiI3114 firmware and would only support drives 1TB and smaller. So I read up on BIOS hacking and eventually was able to replace the original SiI3114 firmware in the BIOS with the latest version. It solved my problem and I made that BIOS available on the web for others to use. I still get 1-2 emails a year thanking me for doing it.

So you can bet that if the HS2 source code was made available with a compiler, I would not only fix the HS2 bugs I've brought up on this thread, I would look at adding features, enabling unused animations, improving the graphics (this was one of the earliest DMDs...they didn't have the time or experience to get all they could out of it), etc. And I would share my modified ROM image with anyone who wanted it.

And I guarantee you that someone would do the same for every popular (and probably most of the unpopular) pins out there.

So yes, there's a large, friendly coding community out there that loves doing this kind of thing and sharing.

-Fred

I imagine (to the extent allowed by Rick) people would be working at both extremes. There'd be ROMs that were basically the same as the best original ROM + some fixes, and then there'd be other ROMs that might completely reimagine the game.

Anyone who has actually had to deal with the APPLE system that ran pretty much every WPC title will tell you that, while it was great for working in 6809ASM, its a far cry from modern technology, and there is a bit of a learning curve. Then actually getting the build chain running on a modern computer is a bit more extensive. WMS mostly used NT based systems back in the day along with several DOS tools for DMD animations.

Well I'm sure with all the emulators out there we could recreate the hardware environment (and hopefully automate passing data between emulators). I'm not a serious programmer. I think if I had the original source and recreated the original development platform, I might eventually be able to fix a few bugs and/or make a few minor tweaks. Anything beyond that would need a real programmer.

I'll be watching these developments closely!

I hope there are some developments to watch!