Bug Powerball Not Detected If It's the Ball in the Plunger After LITZ

Device / OS: iPad 3 / iOS 6.0.1

Description: If, after Lost in the Zone completes, the ball in the plunger lane is the Powerball, it is not detected. If you load the gumball machine with it, you only get credit as if you loaded a steel ball; Powerball Mania is not started.

Steps to Reproduce: Finish LITZ with the Powerball in the plunger lane. (Obviously this is somewhat random.) Then load the gumball machine with the Powerball.

Frequency: Once. There's only a 1 in 6 chance that the Powerball will be in the plunger lane after LITZ, so reproduction is difficult.

Additional Notes: This may be a ROM issue; I'm not sure what the real table does in this situation.

I haven't gotten LITZ, but I think I've also had a ball in which the Powerball simply came out of the trough to the plunger, and was not detected. (In reality, I'm pretty sure TZ can detect the Powerball in that situation at least some of the time.)

The situation where the Powerball comes out of the trough is somewhat less likely to appear than it would in reality, just because whenever you reenter TZ's menu from the main menu, the table's physical state resets and the Powerball teleports into the gumball machine.

Theres optos all over to keep track of it since its non magnetic.

Right--I think some simulated sensor in the trough might not be catching the Powerball, or, that is, distinguishing it from a regular ball. (This isn't a game-ending bug; the ball is scored as if it were steel.)

The real table fails to notice that you're using the Powerball on occasion, but it's a sporadic thing and I don't think it's something that would occur given perfect sensors.

SKILL_SHOT said:

Theres optos all over to keep track of it since its non magnetic.

Click to expand...

There are actually only two proximity sensors. One's in the trough, the other is under the playfield just behind the slot machine kickout. What I think might be happening is that the ROM is not checking whether the first ball in the trough is the Powerball before feeding it to the plunger after LITZ. The (simulated) sensor may be operating fine, but the ROM's programming just doesn't ask the sensor for its status in this particular situation. That's why I noted it may be a table issue and not a TPA issue.