Request Score button - possible?

[JPelter]

Hi, I was thinking of an idea that it might be kind of useful, and possibly easy to implement depending on how the game actually counts up your score for leaderboards. It'd just be a button in the menu which while playing simply outputs the actual score of the current ongoing game. There are a number of tables where it's easy to lose track of your score due to extremely limited rollovers or score rampup. Black Hole, Star Trek: TNG, Who Dunnit come to mind right off. Whether it's easily doable I don't know, but if it is it would help out a bunch.

I'd also suggest removing the rollover limiters on tables so you can just bang as long as you want. Main offenders I can think of right now are Fish Tales (10B max) and TNG (1T max).

 

[TomL]

Maybe on the menu that comes up when you pause the game, it can display your current score.

I'd also suggest removing the rollover limiters on tables so you can just bang as long as you want.

I'm afraid it doesn't work that way. The table ROM code stores your score in a, for example, 2 digit field. Once you score above 99, it rolls over to 00. They is simply no room to store more information about the score.

It's like asking your doctor to remove your eyeball limiters so you can have more eyeballs.

 

[Espy]

I'd imagine this would be impossible for the very reason that your score isn't always displayed. TPA "reads" what is going on in the game via image analysis of the DMD, if I understand correctly. So it pulls it from the final score screen at the end of the game. So as the score isn't displayed at all times, the game technically doesn't know what the score is at all times. The machine ROM does, but not TPA!

It's the joys of trying to interpret decades-old software.

I may be talking nonsense, someone correct me if I'm wrong.

 

[vikingerik]

You're thinking of goal detection, which TPA does do in many cases by analyzing the output to the DMD image. That's why so many tables fail to register certain wizard goals during multiballs, when there's other things going on on the display.

But score rollover isn't done by image analysis. For example, TPA can detect rollovers on CFTBL that are usually caused by a jackpot whose animation takes up the screen. It could only do this by monitoring the internal state of the ROM to see when its score rolls over. It's not dependent on display.

The original post is just asking for TPA to show its detected count of rollovers during a game, so you know where your score is. A hearty +1 for that feature here. Heck I'd just bring it out to the main game screen near the score/DMD display, no need for a menu item.

 

[JPelter]

Maybe on the menu that comes up when you pause the game, it can display your current score.



I'm afraid it doesn't work that way. The table ROM code stores your score in a, for example, 2 digit field. Once you score above 99, it rolls over to 00. They is simply no room to store more information about the score.

It's like asking your doctor to remove your eyeball limiters so you can have more eyeballs.

Right we're not talking about the same thing though. TPA already counts rollovers of the ROM's internal scoring on most tables for leaderboards purposes. It however stops counting after some point on tables, which in the case of TNG is 1 trillion points. I believe TNG handles up to 100B internally (but only displays up to 10B most times) if I remember right.

 

[fromduc]

Of course i +1 this one, but i dont believe one second they'll do something for it, not enough players to be concerned :/

 

[jaredmorgs]

You're thinking of goal detection, which TPA does do in many cases by analyzing the output to the DMD image. That's why so many tables fail to register certain wizard goals during multiballs, when there's other things going on on the display.

You're right: some games have issues with goal detection because the Display state it blocked during multiball, as you suggest.

Goal detection is done using other techniques as well (likely not an exhaustive list).

Lamp states - common for Extra Ball Goals, or any other goal where a lamp is either lit then goes out, or starts in an off state and then lights.

Sound calls - did happen on older tables but not so common now.

The combination of goal detection often depends on the type of specific goal required, and what avenues of detection the devs have at their disposal during the specific game state.

Interesting stuff.