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Ball search remove glass feature

Posted: Mon Mar 17, 2008 2:36 pm
by Kenbo
OK, this is sort of related to the ability to PAUSE a game. Sometimes the ball gets stuck somewhere where you have to remove the glass to retrieve it (like behind the slingshot rubbers). It would be great if after several failed ball searches the game would allow you to remove the glass, retrieve the ball and put it in the shooter lane, replace the glass, and then allow you to shoot the ball back into play and resume where it left off.

Re: Ball search remove glass feature

Posted: Mon Mar 17, 2008 2:39 pm
by sellenoff
Kenbo wrote:OK, this is sort of related to the ability to PAUSE a game. Sometimes the ball gets stuck somewhere where you have to remove the glass to retrieve it (like behind the slingshot rubbers). It would be great if after several failed ball searches the game would allow you to remove the glass, retrieve the ball and put it in the shooter lane, replace the glass, and then allow you to shoot the ball back into play and resume where it left off.
I'm not sure I understand the difference of just doing it like you described? What would the new feature do for you that you can't already have?

Posted: Mon Mar 17, 2008 3:27 pm
by Kenbo
It's pretty similar but there might be a couple of subtleties. Now, if you yank the glass and put the ball in the shooter lane the ball *automatically* shoots back into play and it should wait until the player shoots the ball to continue. I was also thinking that after a couple of failed ball search cycles it could enter the mode automatically and display a message accordingly.

Posted: Mon Mar 17, 2008 4:09 pm
by sellenoff
Kenbo wrote:It's pretty similar but there might be a couple of subtleties. Now, if you yank the glass and put the ball in the shooter lane the ball *automatically* shoots back into play and it should wait until the player shoots the ball to continue. I was also thinking that after a couple of failed ball search cycles it could enter the mode automatically and display a message accordingly.
Ok I understand you now. So you need the opportunity to put the glass back on, before the machine kicks it into play.

I think we might just leave the generic pause ability in place and let the player decide when to kick it in or not..

The main reason is that there's no simple way for us to detect when the game thinks the ball is lost. Remember, we don't have access to the original game code, all we can do is re-act to what the original game code is doing. So the obvious thing would be to try and detect when a lot of solenoids are firing, but that's very problematic.

But, I'm glad you brought this up, as it's a new variation of the pause ideas we had already planned and now it has a purpose. ;)