Tourney 2015-12-14: CftBL, FH, HS, Pin*Bot, SST, Taxi, WWater, Xenon

So you thought you'd get to rest your 20-minute skills until January? NOT SO FAST, HUMAN! As reported by @Captain B. Zarre, Farsight has brightened our holidays with another tournament! That's right, more Martians! MORE WOMEN! Here's the lineup, with each table's current/early high score:

- Creature from the Black Lagoon: 8265M (@invitro, PC Gold)
- Funhouse: 70.1M (@Bubbatom, PC Bronze)
- High Speed: 15.8M (@Crusty Booger, Mobile Gold)
- Pin*Bot: 15.2M (@EAH, Mobile Silver)
- Starship Troopers: 239M (@TILTED_DAN, PSN Silver)
- Taxi: 16.2M (@mattenno, PC Silver)
- White Water: 1290M (@dylan_h, Mobile Gold)
- Xenon: 9.2M (@invitro, PC Gold)
And on Mobile instead of Taxi for some reason:
- Junk Yard: 70.0M (@cdub, Mobile Gold)

All eight tables are new to PC tournaments*. So see if you can drag yourself away from wrapping that Game of Thrones Limited Edition you got your favorite PAF member for Christmas (why, thank you! It's just what I wanted!), and see how long you can hold that left flipper down in Creature! (And don't let the surely imminent release of Judge Dredd stop you -- the pros will wait until December 26th to hand out sentences.)

* Farsight has spread out the PC tourney tables, with a bit of an exception for a Gottlieb craze earlier. I count seventeen tables that have yet to appear, which means they'll probably show up in January to March 2016, and they are: TotAN, BH, BoP, Gorgar, BK, NGG, STTNG, Genie, DrDude, CentPk, CBW, HRC, PotO, ES, Cyclone, J*Bot, and RS.

On PC I see all 9 tables in this tourney.

bug - taxi on iOS

on iOS - TAXI is in the line up - I played a decent game and posted a score but the tournament leaderboard shows None for scores and taxi does not even show up on the tournament website when you click on individual players.

CftbL rollover bug isn't fixed. My 24B game came as 4B.

Thanks for the heads up, I would have completely missed this!

Tarek Oberdieck said:

CftbL rollover bug isn't fixed. My 24B game came as 4B.

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I was afraid of that. I had 8230M at 0:42 and Super Jackpot a couple hits away, and remembered that bug and so drained from multiball. I'm too lazy to look for more on the bug right now, but I think it's safe to go over 10B (20B, etc.) with a small point number?

invitro said:

I was afraid of that. I had 8230M at 0:42 and Super Jackpot a couple hits away, and remembered that bug and so drained from multiball. I'm too lazy to look for more on the bug right now, but I think it's safe to go over 10B (20B, etc.) with a small point number?

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Yes, it's save to never rollover with a jackpot or super jackpot. Playable in a regular game. In a 20 minute tournament?

Tarek Oberdieck said:

Yes, it's save to never rollover with a jackpot or super jackpot. Playable in a regular game. In a 20 minute tournament?

Click to expand...

I have confidence that you can do it.

Xenon rollover bug too. 11M came as 1M. Seems important to finish the game. What a tourney...

I agree with you 100% there Tarek, I really wish they wouldn't put these tables in if there are these bugs for tournament rollovers.

I will sit this one out. Good luck and have fun.

Voof said:

I agree with you 100% there Tarek, I really wish they wouldn't put these tables in if there are these bugs for tournament rollovers.

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CftBL is a known rollover bug that's actually present in every table in TPA, except it's very difficult if not impossible to trigger it in most tables. Because CftBL only goes up to 9,999,999,990 and it's possible to score Jackpots and Super Jackpots well in excess of 2B, it's relatively easy to trigger the bug on that table.

Xenon and every other table that can be rolled at least once in 20 minutes suffers from the same issue whereby rollovers are only counted if you complete the game (i.e. drain ball 3) within 20 minutes. This pretty much affects any alpha-numeric table with a fixed-size display. The only ones I can think of that are unlikely to be affected are Fun House and BoP, since they're WPC and not System 11 or earlier SS/AN ROMs.

So you're going to be left with only a subset of tables - most of the DMDs - that can be used in a tournament.

I suspect that fixing the former bug is going to prove very difficult; it's got to do with how the engine interacts with the emulation of the score display, and all those event triggers, since the engine can't directly hook into the ROM. I'm sure FS are aware of it. I'm sure if they could've fixed it they would've by now.

The latter, is probably a bug in the tournament code, and could probably be fixed a bit easier, but I'm only guessing.

Note that CFTBL probably suffers from *both* of those bugs. You need to roll past 10B with a small score as always, then you also need to end the game (drain ball 3) for any rollovers to count in the tournament.

Funhouse and BoP aren't affected because they're just impossible to rollover in 20 minutes. The Funhouse ROM supports up to 999M internally and BoP 9,999M, neither of which you'd exceed that fast. Same goes for Taxi and 99M.

Both bugs should be fixable. TPA's engine can indeed hook into the ROM. We know it can read the score, because the tournament does so at the 20 minute deadline. The latter bug should be easy to fix, it's just an oversight that ending a tournament game that way neglects to apply detected rollovers. Fixing the bug of detecting big CFTBL-size rollovers is somewhat trickier, but could be done with smart enough logic reading the ROM score frequently.

I know the big dogs are talking, but Peter Williams I've got my eye on you! And I do have a little bit of helpful information about SST. I've said it before, but it must've gotten steamrolled by other more important helpful tips. And this is going out to mistily IOS people, because I'm not sure if it's the same on all platforms. ...learn to get that ramp skillshot every time. It's more doable than you might think. (And not as 'small-fries as you might think). Plunge and then imidiately hold the left flipper. It'll start going back up the left loop. A little bit after it starts fallin, give it a nudge right, with the left flipper still held. This could give you a trap on the left to go for the right ramp, but don't let it. The ball needs to have a little bit of heat on it. And right before it comes to a rest, aim a little bit farther than the ramp itself. That's just something I think about when aiming for the ramp. But think about it. 10 mil every time you hit it. And you have at least 3 opportunities to get it. If you get good at that skill shot, that's a free 30mil. And not to mention for the extra balls. It CAN be done every time, and don't listen to the '5mil awarded on the DMD' it counts as 10 mil every time. Well good luck kids, and make it so. I've got some other pointers about SST. But all I do is aim for the ramps to get recon up to 6. So far all it's awarded me with is 25mil, which is ok, but I'd rather have any of the other options. And any time the orbits are lit, go for those. Got a 45mil orbit gum multiball last night, it's very forgiving. In my opinion, it's the best multiball to go for.

Oh, and I barely ever use the 3rd flipper. It's just too distracting, even if you are trying to kill a bug for a higher value. Only go for the ramps, and when you kill bugs on the way, it's just a bonus

Tarek Oberdieck said:

Xenon rollover bug too. 11M came as 1M. Seems important to finish the game. What a tourney...

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Dizzer2012 has 15,964,020 on Steam and Toolinit has 12,395,400 on Mobile at the moment.

I don't have a lot of free time right now so I'll probably sit this tournament out. I won't get demoted if I don't enter, correct?

Flipperdeflip said:

Dizzer2012 has 15,964,020 on Steam and Toolinit has 12,395,400 on Mobile at the moment.

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16.5M now accepted from the leaderboard. The important thing is it to finish the game.

Junk Yard is still playable on PC, but there is no leaderboard and it doesn't count into the tourney.

ParallaxScroll said:

I don't have a lot of free time right now so I'll probably sit this tournament out. I won't get demoted if I don't enter, correct?

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Correct, at least that is how it has been for the last few tournaments and I don't believe any changes have been made.

Can't see any scores for TAXI in the leaderboard (Android).
Is there an issue?