Bug Games Loses Count Of Balls on Playfield

I was just playing a game of Blackhole and I managed to get the three ball multiball. All 3 balls made it to the upper playfield and one drained down the left outlane. After that, I had one ball on the top playfield and one in the bottom with the gate open. I screwed up while juggling both balls and the ball on the main playfield drained and the one in the lower playfield was sent back up to the open gate. When the ball that was on the main playfield drained the end of ball bonus countdown started and another ball was dispensed to the shooter lane even though I still had one in play.

A similar thing happened to me this morning on MM which completely ruined a great game and I jumped over to Blackhole tonight attempting to escape from the bugs. All of this is happening on the PS Vita, but since Blackhole is not being run by a ROM, I am sure this could happen on any system which is why I am posting this in this section.

I've seen some irregular behavior in Black Hole regarding three-ball play. See http://digitalpinballfans.com/showthread.php/1267-Games-Loses-Count-Of-Balls-on-Playfield for one issue, with links to another post that discusses multi-ball gameplay issues.

This bug is still present in the current iOS version. I heavily played Black Hole to complete the "500'000 points from the Lower Playfield" goal and ran into it at least twice.

It usually happens when Multiball starts and one of the balls drains very quickly, e.g. you are not fast enough to open the gate and one balls immediately goes SDTM. You can still play and when the ball enters the normal playfield the ball from the captive hole on the left is released. With the next drain the end of ball animation will start.

It can also lead to some unexpected behavior of the table. For some reason the entry to the lower field got closed so after a drain and getting the next ball I was unable to enter the lower playfield anymore. The ball would simply sit there. Calling the attendance worked but of course it won't reset the table so the next shot was stuck again. This is only a side effect of the real problem.

Similar bug is present on the PC version, having a great game and as soon as I started multiball I drained a ball by accident and it did the countdown while there were still 2 balls in play, when those drainined due to the camera being wonked up the game ended.

Deltaechoe said:

Similar bug is present on the PC version, having a great game and as soon as I started multiball I drained a ball by accident and it did the countdown while there were still 2 balls in play, when those drainined due to the camera being wonked up the game ended.

Click to expand...

I haven't experienced this bug on PC and had 2 multiballs in one game :/

Deltaechoe said:

Similar bug is present on the PC version, having a great game and as soon as I started multiball I drained a ball by accident and it did the countdown while there were still 2 balls in play, when those drainined due to the camera being wonked up the game ended.

Click to expand...

Also on the PC, I had something similar in multiball. At the start of multiball after I drained the second ball in the lower level I quickly drained a ball on the upper level down the middle. This was before the other ball had been dispensed on the upper level. When the ball drained it kicked me back to plunger view which fortunately was not set directly over the plunger so I could still see the table. I quickly plunged the ball back into the field and continued on with the multiball. Eventually I got both balls back onto the lower playfield. The first ball drained and got stuck just like in this post. Eventually the second ball drained and got stuck behind the first ball. I called the attendant and both balls were placed in front of the plunger. I was able to plunge both balls back onto the playfield and continue. The camera eventually fixed itself after I lost both balls but for the rest of the game I had to call the attendant any time I sent a ball to the lower playfield because the balls would get stuck instead of draining back to the upper playfield.

Playing on kindle fire, I had multiball on my 3rd ball and when the first one ddains the game ended even though there were 2 more balls in motion on the table at the time. WTF?! It's one of the first tables does TPA care that little about old tables?

Notify them in an email. Might help if you lose the attitude though. Bugs happen in games, especially those requiring internet access. It's something you have to deal with on occasion but let them know and they'll fix it.

its actually a long standing bug in the scripting of blackhole since emulation hasnt been back ported to that table....its one of my favourites so i look forward to it some day....but its a long way down some todo list.

since the majority of users dont play multiball much i guess they kinda forgot

edit - [MENTION=3799]FlippyFloppy[/MENTION] seems to be the go to guy for obscure bugs these days....but it would help if you can describe the exact condtions the bug occurs.

edit2 - wonder if the same bug was in pinball hall of fame? seems like the script is only trackinthe one ball on the 3rd anyone wanna check? if so the bugs older thansome of the users heh