So, I’m wondering how people have best worked around playfield multiplier scoring in CFTBL.
In creature, once you’ve played a multiball and maxed your playfield multiplier during it (usually 4x), afaik for the rest of THAT BALL any OTHER multiball you play will have a max playfiled multiplier of 1X. Is there any way to get out of the “1x jail” on a specific ball? (without draining and moving to the next ballof course)
What are the rules around when your next multiball will have a 1x max? Is it if you hit the max multiplier (usually 4x) on the previous multiball? Could you go only to 3x, and then be able to still hit 4x on the next MB?
I’ve been trying to work on some bigger scores, and its an interesting thought process to decide when/if to pull the trigger on 4X.
In tournament mode, ball 1, I’m starting to lean towards not pulling the trigger on bumping from 3X to 4x until after Super Jack 1 is lit, preferably SJ2.
On a side note - has anyone ever played a Creature that lets you boost to 5X? i recently noticed this setting in the manual, but never came across a game with this set.
…with that said, my rule of thumb is go for 3X on super 1 and 4X on super 2. By the time I’ve had a third super that’s usually the match. I don’t go for GCs in tournament mode so usually in that situation the 3X/4X issue doesn’t ever really come up as you’re only ever 16 shots away from an EB (at most).
I believe this 1x max bug is software revision and/or regional settings dependent. As I have played Creatures where going to 4x was always an option some later MBs (arcade play with EBs and looong games). Or wait - is it only in tournament mode?
Creature has another software issue that a lot of you guys have never run into for obvious reasons. When regional setting are set for European (which is acually the one the German importer was in charge of - but with English text), medium (hence also factory) preset will install the hard settings.
So back the in day when games was setup out of the box, they where one mean mother. As hard amongst other cruelties means no ball saver and each snack bar target to be hit by itself.
Agreed Kevin. But I think its fun to try and see the possibilities of higher scores in tournament mode, regardless of how smart it is to execute in a tournament setting.
Also, Soren is right, when I reset to factory defaults my creature when i first got it (here in Netherlands), the default behavior was no spotting of snackbar target, and no cycling of snackbar targets with pop hits. Also, default Euro setting is 30 pop hits for SJ #1.
On a lot of games I generally like the hard install settings (looking at you Diry Harry), but with creature its just annoying and boring. The USA defaults are much better.
How many CREATURE letters/spins are you guys getting on an average trip to the bowl?
Mine gives 2 or 3 on its own, and I can get 4 without picking up a warning on the rare occasion when it’s feeling generous.
Also, my feed to the right flipper from the pop bumpers is pretty rough and just inconsistent enough to be good for a drain or two per game. I can hit the cabinet to get the ball to a right flipper live catch, except when I can’t.
Before the machine got shopped out, the bowl was even stingier, but everything else was much easier. (E.g., the ball could actually rattle into the snack bar scoop.) My GC went from 800 million or so pre-shop to 500 million. Of course, I’m always relatively close to breaking something big.
To get back to the discussion at hand, I haven’t had to worry about the multiplier bug at all.
I agree that US defaults are much better for CFTBL. My personal gripe is that multiball gets harder based on jackpot (take away snackbar spotting) and SJ (take away rotation) instead of how many multiballs you’ve played. There are a few others games like this (NGG is one to the point of having bugs as a result), and I just philosophically disagree with doing it that way.
See I told you. Contrary to what is stated in the manual, hence I regard it as a bug.
It is a bit of a jungle. Some games require a ROM swap for the presets to be exactly as you know them from the US. Even when the game DIPs are set for American. But I guess it is always possible to adjust game features individually to match up.
Other games (System 11 era) may be found having fixed foreign language.
[quote=“keefer, post:8, topic:1125, full:true”]
I agree that US defaults are much better for CFTBL.[/quote]
The default are same (for the medium preset). And will install correctly when the game is set to German. The issue is, that the game installs hard by mistake when the game is set to European.
And agree. Creature is hard enough as it is. Ball saver and rotating snack lights with pickup on the scoop is proper setup.
I would also like to know… is the 4x bug only in tournament mode? And what does tournament mode actually do? It sure as hell doesn’t always make finding the girl in any way predictable
as I know, it’s not a bug, it was intended like this - I don’t find the source anymore, but I thought I read it once in an interview with Trudeau. Differences in tournament mode? no idea, maybe everybody get the same award from the playground, but I don’t think so.
^^^THIS. Far more pertinent issue in most tourney games. But since this about CFTBL scoring… I think the multiball multiplier nuances are beneficial to the game. They provide more to think about re: the choices you can make on how you play the pin for high score.
Nah, from a game design perspective, I’d much rather it be always your 2nd shot or always your 3rd shot regardless of which shots are made. I hate anything that really rewards patterns or predictabillity that’s non-obvious or at least not well-documented.
There is no way this behavior is intended. Any opinion stating contrary is a cover-up by someone that doesn’t understand the importance of how things actually work and why they should work well.
I was thinking more about the pops-raised, non-multiplied value. But it makes sense that it should be completely independent and regardless of tournament mode.
