Fish Tales Bonus Bug?

I’ve noticed this a few times just playing alone, but I never got around to posting about it here until I witnessed it occur twice in tournament play. There are times when Fish Tales displays a bonus count but does not add it to the player’s score. I assume this is a software bug, but @gdd hadn’t heard of it, so I thought I’d ask a larger group :wink:

A few things I noticed that may or may not be relevant: 4-player game, P1 was playing ball 2 and collected Hold Bonus from captive ball, attempted a save and earned a danger when draining. Drained with ~62M, a 6x bonus count totaling 5+M showed on the DMD but P1’s score remained at ~62M. Ball 3, P1 drains and what should be his held bonus (6x, ~5M again) shows in the bonus count but does not add and he ends the game with less than 70M. None of the other players caught him, thankfully, so it didn’t impact the results, but I’m curious if others have observed this and know the root cause.

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@KCB had this happen to him at an old Pinburgh pin golf pre-tourney. He deliberately let the ball drain after checking his bonus, and missed the par score because of it. He was not a happy camper.

I had it happen as (I think?) player 2, and recently had it happen again at SPL under some circumstances that weren’t the same. Luckily I wasn’t bitten twice by it though :stuck_out_tongue:

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#nevertrustyourbonus

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I’ve also seen this on two different Fish Tales locally. In one case, the game was pulled because it was giving bonus to some players and not to others. In both cases it was multi-player games. If anyone does know what may cause it and whether or not it happens in single player games, that would be good to know for the future use of the game. Or I can ask a friend who owns one to do some testing to see if single player games have the glitch.

Is this a Dracula-like issue where bonus isn’t scored because of a tilt warning?

Unfortunately, I’ve definitely had it happen in a one-player game. As a TD, I really don’t want to have to do mental math and close supervision every time it’s in a tournament, but it also feels very yucky to say “that’s just the game!”

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I def wondered this aloud, since Matt had dangered and drained the first time it happened. It happened again on Ball 3 when I don’t think he had any dangers, though.

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This seems unlikely given this comment:

Seems extremely unlikely that the person intentionally draining would shake the machine on the way out.

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Yeah you’ll have to get confirmation from @KCB it’s been a while, the story may have been embellished throughout time :stuck_out_tongue:

Yeah I definitely didn’t pick up a warning. I really did just let it go because uh…well it was my first trip to the PAPA HQ and I wanted to show off a bit :stuck_out_tongue:

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Sounds like a job for @soren!

Played a 2 player game recently as player 2, and lost out on 32M+ from never being awarded bonus. Definitely a bug.

I wonder if there’s any particular thing that everyone accomplished? Like the feeding frenzy or something kind of rare, or if we just haven’t noticed that a lot of the time we aren’t receiving bonus on FT?

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Monster Fish all day with a touch of video mode on ball 2. I’ve had it happen as player 1 in a 1 player game (Magfest) and as player 2 in A 2 player game - more investigation needs to be done for sure!

Does all this chatter mean we should no longer use Fish Tales in a tournament in its current state?

I think it’s still a fine game otherwise - I’d put it into the “use at your own risk” category. Mention to others that bonus may not award as a bug just to keep an even playing field, and then rule any bug instance as a known issue.

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