Wizard Goals Before Standard Goals - the timeless annoyance

[EccentricFlower]

I don't read the goals in advance and I don't really make a concerted effort to try for them. They happen as they happen. So it's annoying to finally unlock the wizard goals for a table and find that among them is one you've achieved a dozen times but which didn't count because of some standard goal you didn't get for the longest time because it was complete bull****.

Current example (though there are many): Just looked tonight to see what was holding me up from going to wizard goals on Party Zone and it was some skill shot nonsense. Now, skill shots are pretty much always BS, and I don't try for them, which means if I need to cross them off the goal list I stop and deliberately blow a few games while I try to get TPA's horrible plunger mechanics just exactly so.

Meanwhile, one of the wizard goals (I see on these forums in the master list) is to finish the Eat-Drink-Be Merry combo, which I do about once every other game. Feh. Feh, I say!

Please cite your favorite (well, that's not the right word, is it) ... please cite your most-loathed examples here.

P.S. The forum configuration has assumed that 'BS' refers to Big Shot. That amuses me.

 

[Xanija]

If I don't get the standard goals within the first two games automatically, I usually look them up because it's very annoying to have a great game with some of the wizard goals achieved, but not getting them registered. I even sometimes intentionally drain the ball after reaching all standard goals to avoid this situation of getting wizard goals in that game, which aren't registered.

Although I don't know if that has been changed. I actually could register a wizard goal in the same game after completing the standard goals in Eight Ball Deluxe.

I don't really remember a lot of tables, where missing standard goals were holding me back from getting wizard goals. The only one I definitely remember is the ugly 180 sec. timer on Going Nuts.

 

[EccentricFlower]

You can register a wizard goal after finishing the standard goals in the same game.

Who Dunnit, I realized after posting this thread earlier, is going to be my ultimate example of anguish. I believe I've made four of five wizard goals but none of them has counted because I've never made a super skill shot. And since it keeps insisting on giving me more tries/autofire when I try to blow a ball after missing the shot, this one could take a looooooong time to do. Even if I leave the flippers completely dead it takes several minutes to end a game. I may have to start interrupting it from the menu and resetting.

Going Nuts is the table I have the fewest goals achieved on and I don't care if I never achieve any of them. That table is a horrorshow. Small wonder it never actually got released.

 

[Xanija]

You can register a wizard goal after finishing the standard goals in the same game.

But that must be new. I'm sure that wasn't possible a while ago.

 

[Heretic]

But that must be new. I'm sure that wasn't possible a while ago.

coulda swore this happened to me a few times in the stoneage, might be wrong. der be dinosuars and things that look like alf the alien....2012ad

 

[vikingerik]

I may have to start interrupting it from the menu and resetting.

Just do this, why wouldn't you? You're not wasting quarters.

 

[Heretic]

Just do this, why wouldn't you? You're not wasting quarters.

some people like to to finish what they started and its a tiny bit of a cheat if your into the achivments thing anyway.i tend to play it the same way too as if i actually put 20p in its all about immersion i guess, the way you play a game fundamentaly changes if you play the reset game imo

 

[shutyertrap]

Yep, hate that you have to completely finish standard goals before knocking off wizards. I also hate goals that depend on luck, looking at you Elvira SS, and goals that you would never do in a normal play of game because they accomplish nothing, looking at you TX Sector.

I do wish that the game would keep stats on each goal and how many times you've accomplished them after the first time. I wouldn't mind being able to also toggle on and off having the achievement pop up each time thereafter you do it. I think stats are always something that keeps a game interesting, and as these don't require altering the ROM, they actually could be kept track of. No need for leaderboards of it, just save it like local high scores are.

 

[Gorgar]

Yep, hate that you have to completely finish standard goals before knocking off wizards. I also hate goals that depend on luck, looking at you Elvira SS, and goals that you would never do in a normal play of game because they accomplish nothing, looking at you TX Sector.

I do wish that the game would keep stats on each goal and how many times you've accomplished them after the first time. I wouldn't mind being able to also toggle on and off having the achievement pop up each time thereafter you do it. I think stats are always something that keeps a game interesting, and as these don't require altering the ROM, they actually could be kept track of. No need for leaderboards of it, just save it like local high scores are.

+1. That would be really cool. There is the pro menu that keeps track of all kinds of stats, but I think it only keeps track if you have pro mode on, and who wants to do that?

 

[EccentricFlower]

I do wish that the game would keep stats on each goal and how many times you've accomplished them after the first time.

I'll +1 that.

I could have sworn that at some point I got a wizard goal in the same game as finishing the standard goals, but maybe I hallucinated it.

By the by, the day after I started this thread I finally did get the super skill shot on Who Dunnit. Did it three more times after that too. And that apparently used up my luck, because I haven't been able to do it again since then

Got the one on Party Zone too, which was a whole lot easier than the Who Dunnit one. Still not sure how the super skill shot on Who Dunnit is a standard goal and "win a bet on roulette" which takes no skill whatsoever is a wizard goal.

 

[shutyertrap]

I am right now banging my head against the desk trying to get TPA to recognize my save data after finally recovering hard drive.

BlahCade listeners will know that my RAID setup had catastrophic failure when Windows 10 pushed through the Anniversary update. Striped array became unrecognizable, put in a temporary hard drive and started from scratch with Windows until such time as a solution to my problem could be found. Obviously when I loaded TPA up, all my data was blank, meaning no goals had been achieved. I've spent way too much time getting to where I was almost complete of goals, but I'd just wait until my drives were recoverable.

Well, said drives were recovered yesterday, cloned to new hard drive, but when I opened up TPA it still showed me as having no goals complete. It is overwriting the old data and I can't figure out how to get it to not. Anybody have experience with this? I emailed FarSight, but maybe help can come from here.

 

[Xanija]

The problem is: Once you launch the game, Steam will check your local save file against the one saved in the cloud. If the local file is older, it will automatically replaced by the cloud file. If for some reason the local file was once new created by TPA, it was copied to the cloud. Older save files will now continuously overwritten by the file from the cloud.

Big question: Do you have any backup of your save games? If not, you're screwed. If yes, you will need to convince Steam cloud that your local save file is more current than the save file in the cloud. It's possible, but a bit tricky. Check out this thread:

http://digitalpinballfans.com/showt...ocal-scores-and-goals-after-Windows-reinstall

The mentioned steam forum guide should help you. Of course you need to do it a bit differently, as you don't want to delete the cloud file, but you want to replace it.

If you have problems, please let me know. I was able to recover my data after a user profile change with this. I'm sure I can help you with it.

You will need to know the SteamID for TPA. This is 238260

 

[Xanija]

Trying to recover everything from my memory:

TPA stores High Scores, table settings ect. in

C:\Users\<Windows user name>\My Games\Pinball Arcade

The file "HighScores" contains High Scores and keeps track of your standard/wizard goals.

Once this is stored here, it will get copied to

<Steam Folder>\userdata\<user ID>\238260

<Steam Folder> is in most cases C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam
<user ID> is a numeric. If you are the only Steam user on this machine, you will only have one Steam ID folder. if you have more than one, you can find out which your Steam ID is using http://steamidfinder.com/

Here you find a file "remotecache.vdf" and a folder "remote"

The file "remotecache.vdf" contains a description of what is being synchronized with Steam Cloud. It is a plain text file, you can (and need to) edit it. The content in my file is

"238260"
{
"pbaprg.dat"
{
"root" "0"
"size" "88452"
"localtime" "1476030680"
"time" "1476030682"
"remotetime" "1476030682"
"sha" "b9b96a5238fca758e77b666407623d1de6b218b8"
"syncstate" "1"
"persiststate" "0"
"platformstosync2" "-1"
}
}

I *believe* the "pbaprg.dat", which sits in the "remote"-Folder contains the high scores and goals achieved, but in a different format than the "HighScores" file in C:\Users\<Windows user name>\My Games\Pinball Arcade. What you would need to do is:

- Copy the file "HighScore" from C:\Users\<Windows user name>\My Games\Pinball Arcade to <Steam Folder>\userdata\<user ID>\238260\remote and then renaming it to "pbaprg.dat"

- Edit the file "remotecache.vdf" as follows (very important, otherwise the file won't get synchronized)

"size" "88452" -> Go to properties of the file "pbaprg.dat" and see the exact byte-size of the file. Replace this value here

"localtime" "1476030680"
"time" "1476030682"

Those are Unix time stamps. You need to look up the time stamp of the "pbaprg.dat" and convert it to a UNIX time stamp. Use http://www.unixtimestamp.com/ to convert it and edit the times here. Since UNIX time stamps are based on the UTC time zone, you will convert the time stamp of the file to UTC time before converting it to a UNIX time stamp. If you don't know your offset to UTC, you can convert the local time to UTC at http://www.thetimezoneconverter.com/

I *think* you can use the same time stamp for "localtime" and "time". You can also try and only change "localtime". If this doesn't work, change both times.

Once you have done this, you should start TPA and see, if you have your High Scores and achievements back. I haven't tested it, I don't want to experiment with it at the moment. Since you can't really break anything at this stage, you can give it a try. Please let me know if it worked. I will then clean up and post this guide into the PC forum and ask for a sticky.

 

[Heretic]

you just melted hollywoods 3d lovin mind sven

edit- may i suggest a remote connection to help out? im sure syt will trust ya

 

[Xanija]

As I mentioned, it's a bit tricky

I'm always happy to do this using a remote connection. I usually use TeamViewer for this.

 

[shutyertrap]

Xanija fixed my files for me! It's quite the process (even though I did nothing but cede control of my computer to him and watch)

 

[Xanija]

It was good you had the original save file in the steam folder available. Made it a bit easier.

Advice to everyone: If you make a backup of your TPA files, make sure to backup the files in

<Steam Folder>\userdata\<user ID>\238260
(those are the sync files to Steam and the best way to restore high scores and standard/wizard goals)

and in

C:\Users\<Windows user name>\My Games\Pinball Arcade

 

[Kratos3]

As for the OP, it's one of my greatest annoyances of the game. A wizard goal is attained when it's attained. It shouldn't matter if the standard goals are done.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Fungi]

What's really annoying is that FarSight heard these complaints during season one and quietly changed it. Then someone either complained about the change or reported it as a bug and FS immediately changed it back.

 

[mpad]

Great that you got it fixed. Another maybe less complicated way to do it is to get offline or disable the steam cloud, then put in you backup files. After that launch the game and make a new save. Now the offline save should be newer and will replace the cloud one next time you go online to sync. Did it successfully this way for other steam games, not sure if TPA makes an exception.