Would it make sense if there was an industry-wide move to rename the thing currently known as the Tournament or Competition adjustment to instead be called something more specific, like “derandomize”? Because IMHO that’s the only thing that adjustment should do. Then the Tournament/Competition preset (or install) can still be the package of adjustments based on the designer’s opinion of what should be done for competitive play. But a nomenclature change like this might avoid a lot of confusion.
Having the Competition Mode adjustment change certain arbitrary things is confusing. For example, in Star Wars Competition Mode adjustment changes the max multiplier from 20x to 10x. Making “Max Multiplier” a separate feature adjustment would be much better. Rename/split “Competition Mode” to “Random Mystery”, “Random Mode”, etc.
As far as the installs, why do I have to install Novelty and then Competition to make sure EBs etc. are off? Why not just turn off EBs in Competition Install? IMO make that the one keypress for typical tournament settings.
FWIW, most tourneys I’ve been to tend to use Competition Mode adjustment, because no one really trusts the installs (TWD might be the exception that I often see using the can’t-light-modes-in-MB adjustment).
Wait, are you telling me that there is a setting to enable the ball save when you open the coin door? Holy crap, I never knew that was even an option. That will make my life a little easier. How long does the ball saver run after the coin door is closed?
Does it handle stuck balls during multiball? For example, someone traps up because they have a stuck ball. I open the machine and it drains the ball on their flipper. I get the ball unstuck and stick it in the shooter lane. Does the machine then spit the other ball back out again?
Here is something else that drives me nuts. I’ll have someone with a stuck ball call me over, I open the machine, put the ball in the shooter lane (since the high power is disabled) and as soon as I close the damn coin door, it fires the ball out. Is there a way to shut that off?
Disabling the inter lock inside the coin door is the best way to avoid this. Then you can put it on the flipper. I just use old flipper rubbers to keep the switch closed.
Yes this is exactly what it does. Available on any reasonably recent Stern machine. (Although on the newer ones with no interlock it is less of an issue)
They aren’t my machines, so I don’t want to go disabling a safety feature and then forget to put it back. The last thing I want is one of his techs to get whacked because I forgot to re-engage the interlock.
Any thoughts on the ball being launched when the coin door is closed?
I don’t know of a way to disable this, but I’ve never seen it to be a problem. Let the player know it’s going to happen and have them get in position as you’re closing the door. If the game has a manual plunger, I like to soft plunge a few times to get it off the shooter lane switch to prevent the autolaunch.
Games do this when switches have already been activated for that turn but it’s registering a ball in the shooter lane that shouldn’t be there. Like @jdelz said, have your players be ready.
I understand what you mean about the interlock, but it could also just be a small ritual you do before/after any league or tournament play. I keep interlock open besides running tournaments and league myself for the same reasons. I just go back around and set them inside the coin door while I’m turning back on extra balls.
Usually they’re the white button that pops out when you open the coin door, on the left side. It’s either one peg or two, depending. If you look closely at the coin door, there’s a small bracket that touches it when the door is closed, completing the circuit. That’s what the flipper rubber would stand in for during competition.
F@$king genius… Guess I’m going to stop throwing away my old rubbers from now on.
As far as the “install vs adjustment” debate goes; the first two years of the Bat City Open I did Factory reset, install novelty, then competition, then went in and fiddled with the settings I didn’t care for, or wished to adjust.
After the second Bat City Open I no longer had to do that because I adopted (much to the chagrin of some of my regular players ) a more tournament aligned setting for all of my machines, so now all I need to do is change two or three settings per machine. Obviously not every event has a location or operator that is providing 15-20 pins for an event, but if you ask whoever is bringing pins to install novelty and competition in advance it will drastically reduce the time it takes TD’s/organizers to set the software up for an event, which will leave you more time to make physical adjustments (lightning flippers on EVERYTHING).
Well that’s my two cents…
Multimorphic games allow this. You can set up individual profiles, group profiles, and event profiles. Multiple people playing the same individual profile on the same game even gives you team game rules.
Settings, high scores, and audits can all be set and tracked for any of these.
If coin door ball save is on there is no need to put a ball in the shooter lane. If 3 balls are in play (2 trapped, 1 stuck) you open the coin door, ball save insert starts flashing, drain all balls into the trough. The game knows how many to put back into play once you close the door. It will save all 3.
I can’t remember the game, but they removed the coin door switch but the coin door ball save setting is still in the settings, so it doesn’t do anything. (GoT maybe?)
I’m guessing putting all this in the manual is hard due to code not being finished at launch - manuals don’t seem to get updated with new code updates, so new features will be missed and the list of what is affected will be wrong.
What would be really useful is to have a ‘settings dump’ option along with the audits so you can save it out to USB, then you can definitively see and record all items not set to Factory and it would be simple to create an app that took that dump file and then allowed you to print out a ‘Changed from Default’ list to stick to the machine for competition.
I’ve often wondered what the various installs do on machines (mainly at the easier end), but can’t be bothered to load them and then scroll through all the menus to find ones which have changed.
I guess on newer, SD card based games, it should be possible to read out the state from the SD card (or an IMG of it).
) a more tournament aligned setting for all of my machines, so now all I need to do is change two or three settings per machine. Obviously not every event has a location or operator that is providing 15-20 pins for an event, but if you ask whoever is bringing pins to install novelty and competition in advance it will drastically reduce the time it takes TD’s/organizers to set the software up for an event, which will leave you more time to make physical adjustments (lightning flippers on EVERYTHING).