Hey, specifically @keefer,
We were playing WOF last night and my friend’s score when from 2 million to 180 million and climbing. She played out her normal game, got 5 or 6 EBs on the first ball and finished with over 400 million.
Software bug?
1 Like
[citation needed]
For some reason, WOF seems susceptible to an opto problem where they just start going crazy on the ramps. That’s the only thing that can explain the extra balls (10 ramps, then 60, 110, etc.) and the high score. I’ve heard of it numerous times, never seen it in person. It happened on a test game once, apparently during Ramp Rampage, because they wound up with over 2B on that mode (mode points are audited on WOF)… 
1 Like
Aha. Thanks for the info.
@travam was playing with us and it didn’t happen to him because, and I quote, “the machine knows there’s a pinball tech playing it.” 
Also, did you know that one of the puzzles is spelled wrong? The answer for one of the Occupations is: FASHON DESIGNER
6 Likes
Yeah, her ramps went up to over 1600 last I remember looking at the DMD!
1 Like
Yeah, what @keefer said. I’ve seen it happen in person on my machine on a few occasions. Usually not as high as you saw, but a GC did appear that was like 2b.
I ended up replacing the ramp opto boards and don’t have the issue anymore. They’re not expensive, less than $10 each. If that doesn’t do it, soldering the wires directly might be worth trying.
1 Like
Yeah WOF and CSI can have some interesting opto malfunction scores 
2 Likes
I remember the WOF ramp weirdness happening during a PAPA C qualifying game a few years ago. There was a lot of discussion about how to handle it and I’m pretty sure the game ended up being voided. Maybe @PAPA_Doug would remember the specifics.
1 Like
Stern got a bad batch of opto boards while building WOF (including one of mine). It was common enough on location that you could spot it when it was happening. Sometimes you could control the phantom hits by moving the game while other times you couldn’t control it.
Either way, the goal was to run the score up to just before it rolls (around 4.2B back then), then tilt the game to get a GC score no one will ever touch. If you see a WOF with high scores over 1B, it probably had a bad opto board at some time in its life. If you find a game currently doing this, go for the GC score!
I’m shopping out my Wheel right now, so I’m getting a kick…
3 Likes
I don’t remember that specific game, but a void would sound right.
1 Like
WOF version 5.0 does have a bug where trip MB jackpot values don’t reset unless power is cycled. Neil Shatz discovered that one. Don’t recall if Keith’s later 6.? version corrected this or If Stern’s 6.??? corrected it.
When WOF was used in a recent tournament qualifying (PAPA? something else?) it was power-cycled at the end of each game. There are bugs in the multiball behavior of both multiballs, including the Trip Multiball behavior you described. For WOF Multiball, the bug is that the Super Jackpot progress between games is remembered, and the base jackpot (and number of jackpots lit) in WOF Multiball is based on this. You can see this on WOF if you start multiball and not all six shots are lit – this happens because someone in a previous game scored a Super Jackpot.
I have not seen these issues fixed in any version of the software. With power-cycling, everything should work fine, though I’m not sure if one player’s Super would help the other players start at the higher jackpot level.
1 Like
What Stern 6.x? The latest code on sternpinball.com is still 5.0.
Keith’s was version 6.00I and Stern’s is (was) 6.02. If I have some time later this week, I’ll try to verify both versions.
1 Like
We did that (power cycled between games) at CAX before then when Neal first discovered the bug. Pretty sure you were the TD that year. Think we also used it in a prior year before anyone knew of the bug.
Actually, I think Neil had known about the bug some time before then, but he wanted everything equal for CAX. Getting high scores on location is one thing. Playing for money is different. He felt bad about revealing the bug right before we used it, but it was the right thing to do.