Dialed In theatre magnet adjustment

Can someone please post a link or the detail on steps to adjust DI settings so the Theatre magnet does a “throw” when appropriate, instead of always dropping it SDTM?
Thanks in advance!

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I have an LE and it’s always been perfect right out the box. It always does what it’s supposed to do, so stock settings work for me (and my game is set steep). However, I’ve seen a HUGE range of settings needed for others to get the same behavior. I don’t know why the settings vary so much from machine to machine.

What people are doing now is setting the magnet really high and then starting to back things down until it stops working consistently and then bumping it back up again until it’s consistent. I have yet to find an adjustment that works universally for everybody.

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It’s curiously located under Device Tests. You adjust the number until you like the result. A lot of people end up around -100 +/- 20 or so.

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Here are some helpful notes from Ted…

Capturing all the Theater magnet information in one place…

New in software release 1.52, added adjustment “Theater Magnet Catch Behavior” with the following settings:
NORMAL - Theater magnet behaves EXACTLY how it did in Release 1.50 and earlier.
PARTIAL - Removes the “catch and release” behavior. Ball will not be caught on the magnet, except for Drone Mystery and Showdown.
OFF - Removes both the “catch and release” and “catch and toss”. Ball will be caught on the magnet for Showdown only.
TEST LAB - Replaces “catch and release” with “catch and wiggle”. This is experimental code and is subject to change. If you don’t like how it works, don’t use it.
If your game tends to drop the ball between the flippers after being caught on the Theater magnet, try these steps (in order):
Adjust the playfield side-to-side pitch slightly by extending the right front leg leveler a small amount. The goal is to have the ball drop to the left flipper.
Change the “Theater Magnet Catch Behavior” to TEST LAB and see how that works for your game.
Change the “Theater Magnet Catch Behavior” to PARTIAL.
Change the “Theater Magnet Catch Behavior” to OFF.
If you don’t feel like messing with the magnet and it just annoys you, set “Theater Magnet Catch Behavior” to OFF.
Previous notes, slightly edited…

The magnet will catch and release the ball for these conditions:
first shot in Volcano mode
all shots in EMP mode
Kilowatt "drop target"
Transit "train bash"
Drone "captive ball"
The magnet will catch the ball and attempt to toss it up through the theater when a Drone Mystery package is collected.
The magnet will catch and hold the ball for the start of Showdown.
The software enforces a 2-second cool-down period after firing the magnet before allowing it to be activated again.
Currently, if there is something else shown on the Theater display (such as EMP), an active Drone Mystery package is NOT displayed. However, it will be collected by a shot to the Theater, and the ball will be tossed in that case.
There have been no changes in the code for the magnet behavior between Release 1.13 and 1.50. (That code hasn’t been touched since April. This is not a “claim”; this is a verified fact.)
Regarding the “catch and release” behavior:
The intention of this is to simulate hitting the item on the theater screen and bouncing off it.
Regarding the “catch and toss” behavior:
I originally put the functionality in as an experiment. I couldn’t get it to work consistently on my development game, and expected that I would likely disable the function before production. However, it worked well enough on a handful of prototype games that I decided to leave it in.
The tossing works by releasing the ball, then pulsing the magnet after delay while the ball rolls away from the magnet. That delay is adjustable in Magnet Test.
For the tossing to be reliable, the ball motion as it rolls off the magnet has to be fairly consistent. I haven’t figured out what conditions contribute to inconsistency. Some games work better than others, but I’m sure that the behavior for any particular game is subject to change over time because of dirt, wear, etc. I repeat: The behavior can (and likely will) change due to physical factors.

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