Nope, didn’t see anything in my notes that Soren had done anything (in fact, my notes on system 11 randomness/unfairness for big guns said ‘no issues’, ha!) - so I just tackled it anew. It could easily be changed to reset every ball as well, and not advance. The code for it is pretty much exactly the same way Pinbot did it (same original programmer)
Wouldn’t know who that was … 
Yeah, I did run it in the game, but the game started doing weird stuff like throwing two balls into play randomly so I had to pull it from the Sys11 World Champs back in March.
The game came from Europe years ago, and has a number of dodgy non original switches in it, so I will replace them all and install new diodes and hopefully that will sort it out.
When the game isn’t throwing 2 balls out, the new roms seem to work well.
Thanks again to Søren for all his work on the Sys11 machines. It really is appreciated.
Dave.
What term do you use when player one locks balls, player two starts multi-ball, and player one has to lock balls again before they can start a multi-ball?
I call that lock stealing.
I call it “lock spoiling” to distinguish it from true lock stealing where you benefit by not having to lock as many balls.
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I call that an inconvenience. Player two didn’t benefit from the locked balls on games where they have to still perform the lock function on their own (Addams, Whirlwind, WCS, etc).
If you lump in games where players have to re-lock if the balls are cleared out by another player that’s a LONG list of games. Pretty much any game without an autoplunger that has a physical ball lock.
I draw the line at player 2 directly benefitting from player 1’s lock progression (Radical, EATPM, etc).
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Yep. If you have to lock your own balls, I don’t consider that stealing.
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New code seems to be working great! Played a couple multiplayer games and the queens rescue is resetting to 500k each game. Builds between players within the game.
I have mine set to collect all guards once invincible and increased the timer to be invincible to 20 seconds from 12. It’s hard to collect, but not impossible.
I think this makes the game much much better.
I’ll report back if I see any bugs.
Everything seems to be working great for @scochar ‘s Roms.
I’ll test @soren ‘s too as soon as I get EPROMs burned. Need a buddy to help me with that.
Possible bug in @scochar ‘s code or the base code.
It’s my understanding that once you hit a drop target down, whatever value is lit up, that locks in as the award for killing a troll after knocking all the drops down. However, the game only ever awards 50k. Doesn’t matter if you’ve locked in 100k or 150k.
Thoughts?
Just curious. Why isn’t Taxi included in that list? Player 2 directly benefits from play 1 locking a ball and not starting MB.
Wouldn’t that fall into etc? Haha
There are degrees of hard lock stealing BS.
Radical factory ROM is probably the worse ever. Taxi is probably the one where it matters the least.
Also remember that these pre-ball saver games does not come with much guaranteed multi-ball glory. Some are even 2-ball’ers with just one jackpot to be had. Those were the days.
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What Soren said
YMMV on ‘degree of difficulty’ with respect to how that lock stealing impacts the game. I find Taxi to be “not a big deal”. I find those other two games to be a “much bigger deal”.
Fire has this. Yuck. Not even any victory laps. It literally goes back into one ball state after getting the JP. Lame.
In later balls the chance to plunge another ball can be as valuable as the Express lane.
Generally I would say some games handle lock stealing very well, like Firepower, Fathom and Black Knight. Others not so well. Big Guns isn’t about lock stealing, it’s about Jackpots. I remember one year it was in PAPA qualifying for the division I was in, and players who understood the Jackpot avoided the game until it was very high
Shouldn’t be an issue with these new ROMs. Just like High speed and others that have had new ROMs made. I like Big Guns better as it’s not flat, you can build it up and cash in. And depending on if you use Soren’s or Scochar’s rom you have the choice of the jackpot resetting player to player or game to game.
Looks like the lamps are linked to the drops being downed, not the troll bonus value. As near as I can tell from simulating it in pinmame you will get 50k-150k for the bank after the first downing (maybe on the first downing as well) and the troll is always 50k, regardless of if it’s stock L8 or modified L8. maybe earlier rom rev. did it differently if you remember differing troll values. I can investigate further if you really want to know the answer from reading the code/looking at lamp status, but it would be faster for you to test it in your actual machine… LMK.
Edit: Did some more simulation… seems to be related to something with timing perhaps, or the first target downed? Do the lamps time out if you hit 1 or 2 down and deliberately miss the third?
From what I can tell this is the way the stock L8 rom works. I’m getting the same 3 awards for the drops downed, 50k, 100k, or 150k and always 50k for the troll.
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You’re right. I found this out and forgot to report back. The game is behaving correctly. Drops down, it collects the lit award. Troll is always 50k