Request Please improve "Call Attendant" logic-- it ruins games (suggestion included)

[phreaker47]

Please improve "Call Attendant" logic-- it ruins games (suggestion included)

I just had another huge game ruined by this. It's happened on BOP, EATPM, and now Funhouse (450 Million+ game down the tubes). In all cases, it's the same:

One ball somehow, somewhere either gets stuck somewhere or disappears into the void. The game gets stuck in limbo, waiting for this ball. Waiting through the reset cycles does nothing. Nudging/tilting does nothing.

This is where the attendant SHOULD save you. But instead: "Ball not stuck. Returning to game in..."

And you are dead in the water. All you can do is quit.

I do have a suggestion for this. Regardless of whether the game "believes" a ball is stuck, "Call Attendant" should work if certain criteria is met:

- You are in the middle of the ball (points have already been scored), AND
- You have not pressed a flipper for at least, say 30 seconds, AND
- No points scored or targets hit during that time

You don't want the attendant to be something that is ever exploitable in any way, but with the simple criteria above, I don't see how that would be possible.
Does anyone see any holes in this? I can't. I'm very discouraged. I thought this didn't happen in Funhouse. Until today, I've seen "lost" balls end up back at the ball launcher, or calling the attendant actually worked. but not this time. I got jacked again.

 

[Sean DonCarlos]

This has been suggested before: Notes Toward a More Competent "Call Attendant" Feature.

Unfortunately, one of FarSight's developers has explained that you can't just forget about a ball and create a new one in these situations, because the table's ROM will get confused. Read the gory details here. (Keep reading a bit beyond that first blue post, too, Mike and I go a few rounds discussing the problem.)

 

[Advalle]

This crap happens, and somehow the game knows to do it on your very best games. The games I play that this happens is RBION, AFM, BH. We should try e-mailing support with this suggestion. Part of me getting the top scores in RBION imply not only to play well but that you know also what to avoid so you dont encounter the bug.

Hopefully they wil fix this ever

 

[grashopper]

I know it isn't great but I wonder if worst case scenario they could reset the rom and spot you the score you had. You would lose the progress towards the goals but not everything.

 

[phreaker47]

This has been suggested before: Notes Toward a More Competent "Call Attendant" Feature.

Unfortunately, one of FarSight's developers has explained that you can't just forget about a ball and create a new one in these situations, because the table's ROM will get confused. Read the gory details here. (Keep reading a bit beyond that first blue post, too, Mike and I go a few rounds discussing the problem.)

Just read all that. Wish I could say EXACTLY how it happens, but I can say a couple things about FH:

- It seems to happen mostly during multiball (quick or midnight)
- One of the "holes" in the table is Rudy: sometimes I see a shot going into Rudy's mouth, but it takes a sharp upward hop off of his lower lip (you can see it appearing to go skyward just before disappearing from sight)... these shots often, however, end up back at the plunger

 

[Sumez]

This has been suggested before: Notes Toward a More Competent "Call Attendant" Feature.

Unfortunately, one of FarSight's developers has explained that you can't just forget about a ball and create a new one in these situations, because the table's ROM will get confused. Read the gory details here. (Keep reading a bit beyond that first blue post, too, Mike and I go a few rounds discussing the problem.)

Of course they can't. But they should easily be able to move the existing ball. I don't see a problem with returning it to a plunger lane, no game ROM I've ever encountered ever had a problem with that.

The attendant never works when the ball gets stuck in RBION's metal ramps, even though the ball is right there!

 

[Crush3d_Turtle]

I frequently see this happen on Funhouse to the point where I don't want to go for highscores on that table since it is not a questions of if it will happen, but when. It also happens on RBIoN near the vari-target scoop as well as on CV in the upper left portion of the table. All of these are in relation to the PS Vita version.

 

[pezpunk]

according to the developer, the ball attendant says the ball is not stuck only if one of the following are true:
- the ball is in contact with a flipper
- the ball is in the plunger area
- the ball is in a trap

i've lost some huge games to the same bug. i've also seen balls fly off the table (the glass on top of the table doesn't seem to be a collision point, for example!), but those balls always seem to get replaced (usually instantly) into the plunger. when we get into the broken state, correct me if i'm wrong, but it's almost always during multiball, isn't it, regardless of table?

it doesn't seem like the first two items are the problem (plunger/flipper). maybe a ball gets stuck in a trap, wedged into some geometry (maybe by another ball entering the same hole under certain weird conditions?) so that it can't get out with the ejection or by nudging. so the table ROM thinks it ejected the ball, and the ball search is unsuccessful because it's actually stuck. and meanwhile, when the attendant checks, he sees the ball is still in the trap, and therefore cancels the reset.

 

[Sean DonCarlos]

Of course they can't. But they should easily be able to move the existing ball. I don't see a problem with returning it to a plunger lane, no game ROM I've ever encountered ever had a problem with that.

I agree, but it apparently is in fact not that easy, as if it were, they would have done it by now and we wouldn't be having this discussion.

 

[Worf]

I think most of the stuck balls are because they bunched up around traps - especially during multiballs where multiple balls may run into a trap simultaneously.

If only we could detect whenever the game was in the "ball search mode".

 

[enduser2941]

For what it's worth, I had this happen to me in Taxi and more then once. If you under shoot the ball off the plunger say probably a little less then half way up, the ball just *poof* disappears and the attendant eventually pops up and never is able to get the game going again thus causing me to have to task manager on the game and exit (droid version). It has snookered me a couple times now. Don't know if this helps of hurts this topic, but I figured I should add my experience here as well. Tks!

 

[Sumez]

according to the developer, the ball attendant says the ball is not stuck only if one of the following are true:
- the ball is in contact with a flipper
- the ball is in the plunger area
- the ball is in a trap

Well then that's what they need to fix, because the above just isn't true, for just about every table.

 

[pezpunk]

well, i can understand with all the various quirks of the myriad ROMs and how delicate their sanity can be, you don't want to go teleporting balls from place to place. i can buy that. every table would require its own code for dealing with the situation, and who knows how reliable it'd be.

but i do think it should be feasible to have an "end game now" button that automatically quits the game, records the score, submits it to the leaderboards, and resets the ROM. this is especially needed since the very best and longest games are the ones statistically most likely to encounter these game-destroying bugs.

obviously, it'd be better if the problem never occured, but it's been a perniscious thing that rears its head across multiple tables and has done so since launch. it might be time to admit that it's not going to stop completely.

 

[Sean DonCarlos]

but i do think it should be feasible to have an "end game now" button that automatically quits the game, records the score, submits it to the leaderboards, and resets the ROM. this is especially needed since the very best and longest games are the ones statistically most likely to encounter these game-destroying bugs.

Actually, I've asked for that, too:

Even if we just had an "end game in progress" option (with appropriate safeguards against accidental activation!) so that we could force a malfunctioning game to a semi-graceful conclusion and preserve whatever scores/goals we had attained up to the point when the problem occurred, I think players would be happier.

I can't remember what FarSight's response was...or maybe they didn't give one.

 

[Tabe]

I don't buy for a second that there's not a solution to this. End the current ball, make note of the score and various other values, reset the ROM, insert correct values, start new ball.

Tabe

 

[pezpunk]

reseting the ROM would be like unplugging the machine and plugging it back in. they've got the code that was burned on the chips running in an emulator (on some tables) -- i think it's digging into that chip logic for each machine that is giving the engineers pause.

 

[Sean DonCarlos]

I don't buy for a second that there's not a solution to this. End the current ball, make note of the score and various other values, reset the ROM, insert correct values, start new ball.

Tabe

From what I understand, the ROMs have integrity checks; you can't just "insert correct values" because it will reset them:

We haven't found a way to get it to work yet. The ROM has integrity checks in, so if you mess with certain values it just resets everything to default.

 

[brakel]

Then they could give us the option to end the game and reset to a known and stable state. When you start TPA the tables ROMs' start in a known stable state. That's why Mike always says that if you keep restarting a table you'll always be the same name in Fun House and other things like that.

 

[Fungi]

Okaaaay. Well, i just got screwed. On TZ, I was over 3.9b on ball one, with an extra ball waiting. Finished my 2nd LITZ but a ball got stuck under the upper flipper when LITZ ended. Flipper wouldn't release. The table then fed a ball into the launch trough to launch. I plunge it only to find the camera won't move and the flippers remain unactive. Call Attendant didn't work. I had to kill my game.

To recap. 3.9 billion. Ball one. This was in the Tournament. All gone. I'm done with future tourneys.

 

[ericb]

I'm sure you guys are all in perfect shape, have elegant homes, and are leaders in your communities. I mean, since all you people do is demand perfection from others, you obviously demand the same of yourselves.

It's a game. Quit being so damn serious and focus on something other than the negatives for a change.