Request Pro tables?

Laurence Merraine · May 23, 2012

I have been following the kickstart quite closely, and noticed that if you donate 100$ you will gain access to the operator menus.

I personally would love to be able to access these on all tables, and just wonder.

Most casual players wouldn't even care about this option, but I would happily pay an extra $1 or $2 to have access these per table.

Just makes the feel of owning the table that much more authentic, as stupid as it sounds.

Leader boards would still have to be from default tables, with no operator changes, but just think what you could do, especially things like reset high scores, I have a boy that may reach them on default, but no way could reach at this stage what I get.

Stats etc....

Any hopes of something like this being implemented, the extra could go towards licensing fees that purists would probably pay for.

gsxrboy · May 23, 2012

Perhaps a one time buy "Enthusiasts Menu" option DLC of $10 or something that unlocks the menus for every table, apart from TZ etc if they are offered as a kickstarter benefit.

Bowflex · May 23, 2012

Seems like it would be an easy thing to implement and for a small fee they could rake in a pretty good amount of money so they could have more funds available for premium licenses.

HOW · May 23, 2012

+1 for Op Menus. It's a very cool feature in VP.
I also want button access in Attract Mode to access the Easter Eggs.

Sean DonCarlos · May 23, 2012

Bowflex said:
Seems like it would be an easy thing to implement and for a small fee they could rake in a pretty good amount of money so they could have more funds available for premium licenses.

Easy to implement, but a pain to test. Think of all the different combinations of table settings that would have to be tested. Maybe they could release it as an unsupported, use-at-your-own-risk feature (except for TZ: since that menu is a reward for $100+ backers, I'm expecting it to work properly!)

That being said, I'm all for operator's menus on all tables.

Richard B · May 23, 2012

Serenseven said:
Easy to implement, but a pain to test. Think of all the different combinations of table settings that would have to be tested. Maybe they could release it as an unsupported, use-at-your-own-risk feature (except for TZ: since that menu is a reward for $100+ backers, I'm expecting it to work properly!)

That being said, I'm all for operator's menus on all tables.

Full operator menus might be hard to test, but option screens giving us the ability to tweak a handful of changes, like extra balls and difficulty settings, shouldn't be too hard to include. It would also be nice to include alternate roms, if possible.

superballs · May 23, 2012

I'm all for alternate roms, and operator menus. Simply to be able to toggle non-free play so I can use up all them otherwise useless match credits.

Fuseball · May 26, 2012

I'm not sure whether the FarSight guys would have the tools to edit the ROM code itself, which might make any "safe" implementation of the operator menus impossible. The parts we would most likely be interested in are the Standard Adjustments (Balls per game, extra ball and replay settings, tournament mode etc.) and the Feature Adjustments (All the cool stuff relating specifically to that particular game).

In the Utilities menu there is an option to set difficulty presets (From Extra Easy to Extra Hard). Even if we can't get full access to the operator menus, the ability to set this value would help to make the games more challenging. It's the kind of feature I would love to see as a reward for completing the Wizard Goals.

The problem with allowing access to the operator menus is that all online high scores are rendered meaningless because everyone could be playing on completely different settings. The way around this is to implement the Tournament Play feature built into many of the games (all the WMS DMD games I have owned at least) with a set default difficulty preset for all online competition.

I would love to see alternate roms supported. In general that last revision of the production roms is the only one you need, but many of the games have received exceptional home rom upgrades (Cirqus Voltaire is improved hugely and made much harder by the home roms). Whether the rights holders at Williams would be happy with this is another matter...

Richard B · May 26, 2012

The leaderboard issue is simple - any adjustments at all, or at least those that make the game easier, disqualify it from being uploaded. I don't know if rights holders would object to using official roms. There are unofficial ones they might object to, such as the ones that remove the "bleeps" on swear words in games like Medieval Madness and South Park, but there are roms that make significant changes. This is especially the case with home roms, which are often released long after the table has been distributed (Lawler only recently released his final, definitive rom for TZ), and tend to fix issues that came to light only after being extensively played by the general public. In the case of TZ, there are also prototype roms that are much different from the finalized ones, so much so, that using them requires the owner to permanently and irreversibly alter the machine by installing a third magnet.

Fuseball · May 26, 2012

Ah yes. The TZ third magnet mod. I had the 9.4H Home rom in my TZ. Couldn't bring myself to install a third magnet though. Always told myself that if I ever picked up another TZ in poor condition, I would try it out.

Completely agree on the leaderboard issue. I think you would need to offer a "reset to default" option too, in case you get the settings way out of shape. The Tournament Play setting is great leveller too. A few of my friends play in competition and all the tables are setup in Tournament mode.

Gord Lacey · May 26, 2012

I think it's a great idea, and I'd have no problem giving FarSight some extra money to enable to operator menus. Now, should it be a per-table ($0.99?) or a one-time unlock fee ($10?). I think a per-table fee may be best simply because FarSight would have to test on a per table basis, but the die-hards would probably want a single fee for everything.

Brian Clark · May 26, 2012

When I saw this topic, I was thinking it would be about newer Sterns becuase they have Pro and LE editions for most of the newer ones. If they ever get around to SAM emulation, which may be a bear since modified Whitestar is already one of the more demanding MPUs, it would be interesting to see how they handle games with Pro and LE editions.

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