DE SW Extra Ball

stangbat

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I posted this on RGP but I figured I'd post it here too since I know there are a few DE SW owners on the forum.

I've noticed that my DE SW has stopped offering the extra ball shot. I don't mean it is auto adjusting to require more ramp shots before offering an extra ball. It no longer offers it any more, period.

The extra ball percentage is set in the menu for 25% (factory), but when you look in the audits, the percentage of extra balls offered has dropped to 13% and is falling. In other words, the game started to adjust the frequency of extra balls offered to keep it at the 25% level, but never started offering it again so that the percentage can rise and stay near the 25% level.

I tried manually adjusting the extra ball percentage down to 24% and up to 26% to see if it would force a recalculation and start offering extra balls again. No luck.

I found this thread discussing this:
http://groups.google.com/group/rec.g...c90a7e7fa9ef97

In it RonKZ650 states:
I had a similar problem on a Data East "Hook" game and never could figure it out. After a while (about 400 games) the machine would lose track of how much percentage of extra balls it had given out and think is was still at 20% when in reality it was much lower. In the Audits you could read games played and extra balls given and it didn't matter what the numbers were, the machine would indicate 20% and would not light the extra ball shot during gameplay. I had to reset the audits every 400 games to get normal play. Frustrating.

I found that the no extra balls behavior started after my New Year's party when the total number of plays since an audit reset went over 400. Seems to back up what Ron stated. Has anyone else seen this behavior?

I guess my options are to 1) live with no extra balls being offered 2) reset the audits when the game tries to auto adjust the percentage.

Also, I am running the latest ROMs, CPU version 1.03.
 
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I am a new owner of a DE SW. Sorry..can't offer any help..but definitely will be following this thread.
 
I posted this on RGP but I figured I'd post it here too since I know there are a few DE SW owners on the forum.

I've noticed that my DE SW has stopped offering the extra ball shot. I don't mean it is auto adjusting to require more ramp shots before offering an extra ball. It no longer offers it any more, period.

The extra ball percentage is set in the menu for 25% (factory), but when you look in the audits, the percentage of extra balls offered has dropped to 13% and is falling. In other words, the game started to adjust the frequency of extra balls offered to keep it at the 25% level, but never started offering it again so that the percentage can rise and stay near the 25% level.

I tried manually adjusting the extra ball percentage down to 24% and up to 26% to see if it would force a recalculation and start offering extra balls again. No luck.

I found this thread discussing this:
http://groups.google.com/group/rec.g...c90a7e7fa9ef97

In it RonKZ650 states:


I found that the no extra balls behavior started after my New Year's party when the total number of plays since an audit reset went over 400. Seems to back up what Ron stated. Has anyone else seen this behavior?

I guess my options are to 1) live with no extra balls being offered 2) reset the audits when the game tries to auto adjust the percentage.

Also, I am running the latest ROMs, CPU version 1.03.



i may be off on this, but here's my take as i've encountered the same thing with my DE SW:

first thing i would do is start a game, hold in the flipper for info, and see what the ramp setting currently is for an extra ball.

my guess is the extra ball feature DID NOT disappear from your machine....it's just waaaaaaaaaaay the hell up there. like 99 ramps or so. that's what mine did. it went all the way down to 3 ramps, then hovered around 7-11 for a while, then started CLIMBING....all the way to 99 eventually. and no matter what we did it would not come back down....didn't matter if you scored 10,000 or 100,000,000...wouldn't budge until the settings were adjusted.

i am not really fond of the way star wars handles the extra ball thingy....seems it's tied into replays, ramps, scoring, etc. i wish you could just set the damn thing at a certain number of ramps and be done with it.

now, i don't know if these settings are gonna work over the long haul, but they seem to be OK for now....granted, i haven't played my star wars personally in a while, so the scores have been lower (my 5 year old has been playing) which affects the replays which, in turn, affects the extra balls. it's now at 3 again but was staying around 13-19 or so when i was playing a good bit. i suspect (hope...lol) it'll go back up when i start playing more/scoring more, but i won't know for sure until i get some more time in it:

- adjustment #3 (replay) is set at 140,000,000

- adjustment #42 (extra ball %) is at 35

- adjustment #45 (save ramp ex. ball) is set on NO (which only means that the ramps reset every ball).


in my time messing with it, it seems that those first two adjustments have a lot to do with the number of ramps required for the extra ball. again, i could be wrong....but they both seem to have an effect on it. in other words, the more replays you get, the higher it seems to kick the extra ball ramps....every time i've had the extra ball percentage set lower, it seems to have affected it MORE depending upon the replays.

hope that helps...and isn't too difficult to read. lol.
 
Thanks a lot pudluther. I forgot about the instant info. I whish I had checked that before I reset the audits. I'll keep and eye on it and try your suggestions.
 
Thanks a lot pudluther. I forgot about the instant info. I whish I had checked that before I reset the audits. I'll keep and eye on it and try your suggestions.


hell, i just hope it works!! :)



seriously though, it seems to be tied to a number of different factors.....replays and percentage being the main two. problem is, from what i've seen, you can't just adjust ONE....it's almost like you have to find the perfect balance between the two.


good luck.....and seriously, let me know what happens (either in this thread or a PM). the more we figure out about the extra ball feature in SW, the better for both of us.
 
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