Next Stern Pin... Fighting Soon!

[mwong168]

V0.97.0 - September 21, 2023
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== FEATURE CHANGES ==
MUSIC
- New song added: "Rescued" (featured in the Final Battle finale)
- Song Select - all 16 Foo Fighters songs can be selected at the start of the ball.
- DJ Mixer - Added "Rescued" to "Foo Fighters" playlist.
- DJ Mixer - Added "The Overlord's Awesome Mix" playlist.

FINAL BATTLE
- The Final Battle is qualified by completing all 6 cities, playing the two city wizard modes,
playing Foobot Multiball, and playing The Pretender Multiball (3rd Overlord feature).
- The Final Battle final wizard mode starts on left ramp.
- No more cities can be visited once you've played them all until The Final Battle is played.
- Phase 1:
Hurry up value counts down, shoot Pat and Dave shots to collect, hit enough to free them.
Hit both bot targets on left and right of the right ramp to spot a Dave shot.
Now free the other four band members: Rami (Left orbit), Nate (Upper Loop), Chris (Right Orbit),
and Taylor (Side Ramp). Each hurry up grows in multiplier, from 1x to 4x.
- Phase 2:
All shots light to do damage to Overlord, hit one and it goes out, with a score and
damage multiplier 1x 2x 3x etc. Overlord does 1x damage, relights shots, and resets multiplier
- Phase 3:
All shots do damage, hitting any shot relights all others.
Hit both Overlord targets to light a Super Jackpot. Hitting Overlord targets moves Super Jackpot.
Scoring Super Jackpot adds a ball into play.
All scores multiplied by number of balls in play
- After The Final Battle is played, all Foobot parts are lost, but a permanent Foobot Part Multiplier is incremented,
for example after The Final Battle any active or upgraded Foobot shot multipliers earned will be 3x instead of 2x.

FOOBOT MULTIBALL
- Starts with 3 balls in play (previously 6) with add-a-ball opportunities
- Each time you hit the band member shot, the jackpot multiplier is increased.
- Overlord will now need to be made an increasing amount of times to relight the shots,
each hit will continue to score the current jackpot value at the current multiplier
- After enough Overlord shots are made, the band member shots relight.
Every other time this is done will add a ball into play (starting with the second time)
- Background instructions added along with current jackpot value and multiplier,
and super jackpot value and multiplier
- Auto plunges during Foobot Multiball will not score side ramp
- Speech added
- Lightshows added
- Foobot Multiball scoring changed:
- Jackpot values are now 3 million + a percentage of mode points for the associated foobot part
with that shot (see below)
Jackpot values:
Rami: 5% of Sonic Radio mode points
Pat: 1% of all van mode points
Nate: 5% of Overlord Multiball points
Taylor: 5% of Combotron Jackpot points
Dave: 5% of Area 51 points
Chris: 5% of Bot Frenzy points
Max jackpot contribution for each band member is 10 million.

OVERLORD MULTIBALL
- Improve The Pretender super jackpot choreography
- Improve background light effects during Overlord multiballs
- Monkey Wrench super jackpot is now qualified by only hitting all the single jackpots
(previously had to hit all single and all double jackpots)
- Monkey Wrench double jackpots now increase Overlord jackpot and super jackpot values
- Until The Final Battle is played, only The Pretender will be an available Overlord multiball

AREA 51 MULTIBALL
- Tweak rules for Area 51 multiball to automatically light the Super Jackpot after 8 regular jackpots
(previously had to hit upper playfield lock targets and two upper playfield loops).
While super jackpot is lit, all shots on lower playfield now build super jackpot value
until the super jackpot is hit
- Tweak scoring for Area 51 multiball: Jackpot now starts at 750k ( previously 500k).
Upper playfield shots now boost jackpot values by 250k (previously 500k).
- Speech added
- Multiball start lightshow added

LIGHTNING MODE
- Lightning mode is now 30 seconds with +5 seconds each time a lit ramp or Ka-Foom target is hit
- Added light effect, display effect, and callouts for Lightning Mode

OVERLORD LOCK
- Overlord lock no longer auto-launches by default, and allows player to take a skill shot.
- "PLUNGE BEHAVIOR AFTER LOCK" adjustment added:
"SKILL SHOT AVAILABLE" (new default)
"NO SKILL SHOT WITH AUTOFIRE OFF"
"NO SKILL SHOT WITH AUTOFIRE ON" (previous behavior)

CHICAGO
- Base value increased from 3mil to 3.5mil

LOS ANGELES
- Side ramp will no longer increase combo X

BOT TARGETS
- Bot target rule disabled during wizard modes and removed from UI
(Bot frenzy can still run during wizard modes if started beforehand)

RADIO MYSTERY
- Radio mystery will no longer award add a ball during a wizard mode if ball save is still active
- Radio rule disabled during wizard modes, and removed from UI
- Mystery rule can still be activated, despite not advancing your radio dial
- Mystery timer has been updated with common game timer logic with small grace

HIGH SCORE TABLE
- New UFO Button high score entry

SPEECH
- Flipper button speech added during attract mode
- New Orleans DJ speech remastered

== BUG FIXES ==
- Fixed crash when spinner is spinning when Start Button is pressed.
- Clean up dead bot sprites that sometimes were left on screen
- Fixed Overlord locked ball being released upon completing a mode in some cases
- UFO button behavior in Chicago mode will no longer spot the upper playfield shots

== SYSTEM V3.47 ==
- Updated to nodeboard firmware/protocol v1.11.0
- Conagent v1.0.12
- Various behind the scenes improvements for correctness and performance.

 

[Chris Bardon]

Played a couple of games on the new code, and noticed some new callouts, but given that I've never finished both DC and Austin in the same game, didn't see a bunch of new stuff. There's still no real implementation of the combo-tron stuff yet, is there?

 

[Ponzie]

Doesn't look like it...
But a new song added is kinda cool.
I noticed a few new callouts as well and a few new lightshow sequences.
Only .97 so close but not quite done yet...and if this update was only a "0.01" update... wow.

Played a couple of games on the new code, and noticed some new callouts, but given that I've never finished both DC and Austin in the same game, didn't see a bunch of new stuff. There's still no real implementation of the combo-tron stuff yet, is there?

 

[Chris Bardon]

Only .97 so close but not quite done yet...and if this update was only a "0.01" update... wow.

Well, they were on 0.96 before, so not much to rev before 1.0 if they're sticking to 2 significant digits. I did notice the callouts for the overdrive save that remind you to hold the left flipper button (nice), and the fact that all 16 songs are selectable from the start. I didn't notice that at first, but you have to keep scrolling right to get to the next screen.

The one thing that does still seem a little annoying about the game is that the VAN relight still takes a lot of shots. If you drain out of a mode, there's no way to quickly restart it (like on Godzilla)-you have to go through the whole process of re-qualifying it again, which can take a bunch of shots. Might be interesting to have a way to quick-resume your in-progress mode, but other than having the left ramp capture immediately (and offer resume/pass), I can't think of where you'd do it, and the left ramp would kill the game flow. As it stands, I'm finding that if I don't beat a mode first try, I'm more likely to switch to a new one for the next attempt, since there's a lot more points in completing a mode the first time. On the other hand, getting to DC/Austin is also valuable, so maybe finishing things up is a better strategy? It would also be interesting to have van mods locked into the mode when it's started, so resuming a mode with a score boost would keep the boosted shots, which might be an incentive to go back to something that you didn't finish?

Anyway, I think the game is still fun, but it seems like it needs one more thing layered into the main section of the game. Maybe the combo stuff will fill that out.

 

[Ponzie]

Well, they were on 0.96 before, so not much to rev before 1.0 if they're sticking to 2 significant digits. I did notice the callouts for the overdrive save that remind you to hold the left flipper button (nice), and the fact that all 16 songs are selectable from the start. I didn't notice that at first, but you have to keep scrolling right to get to the next screen.

The one thing that does still seem a little annoying about the game is that the VAN relight still takes a lot of shots. If you drain out of a mode, there's no way to quickly restart it (like on Godzilla)-you have to go through the whole process of re-qualifying it again, which can take a bunch of shots. Might be interesting to have a way to quick-resume your in-progress mode, but other than having the left ramp capture immediately (and offer resume/pass), I can't think of where you'd do it, and the left ramp would kill the game flow. As it stands, I'm finding that if I don't beat a mode first try, I'm more likely to switch to a new one for the next attempt, since there's a lot more points in completing a mode the first time. On the other hand, getting to DC/Austin is also valuable, so maybe finishing things up is a better strategy? It would also be interesting to have van mods locked into the mode when it's started, so resuming a mode with a score boost would keep the boosted shots, which might be an incentive to go back to something that you didn't finish?

Anyway, I think the game is still fun, but it seems like it needs one more thing layered into the main section of the game. Maybe the combo stuff will fill that out.

Agreed and good point on the VAN relight as I found the same thing in it taking a while to get it going again... Maybe if you drain, you stay in the mode until it is completed? Or if the action button is lit and you can hit it before the drain is registered you can "save" your progress so the mode starts up next ball.
The combotron looks like it could be really cool too.

Didn't realize there was a "page 2" for the songs! Would be pretty amazing if they kept adding a few new tracks....

Overall, I'm really loving it as a fun shooter.