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Tommy can you play me ?!! NEW CODE released v5.0 :D

Sgt GrizZ

Sgt GrizZ

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Ex PinballInfo Admin . MIA Brighton Hove beach
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Ive
Oh yes indeed .....

Chad Hendrickson has worked his magic on Tommy !! Massive ruleset overhaul, bug fixes, new features ...:clap::clap::D Chad is a Pinball Wizard !!

I have been beta testing and feedbacking to Chad on this for the last few months , as a massive Tommy fan I was so stoked when he contacted me about it. Big up to @Paul for helping out with the multiple ROM burning :thumbs:

I think Tommy fans will love it, scoring has been majorly balanced , modes have had major buff so that multiball no longer dominates the scoring. New multiball modes, improved video mode, more blinder action, new lighting effects .....

I'll talk through more of this later for Tommy fans when have more time.

Code here

http://www.pinballcode.com/downloads/

Guide here
http://www.pinballcode.com/tommy5
 
Monkeyboypaul said:
new rules for old games, love it.

Do you think he'll ever do a B/W game? Or is he a big DE fan?
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to speculate on my own question; i'd guess Mr Planetary Pinball would sue anyone who touches the B/W code, or ask for a big royalty...

Stern seem to struggle coding their existing games, let alone touching anything older.
 
What a time to be a Tommy owner :-D ColorDMD and now new code!

Regarding ColorDMD, apparently Frank now has the new ROM and hopefully a ColorDMD 5.0 compatible update will be released shortly. There are some new animation/text that need colouring.

Sent from my C6603 using Tapatalk
 
cooldan said:
Pffffffttttttt, why, did his girlfriend get a strap-on for his birthday?
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Lol - She nearly knocked me out just now..... Lets just say it involved a lack of communication and a door.... and a foot....

And i have had a few messages..... The initial one is currently in the post to @Sgt GrizZ - Once he confirms that it's all good then I'll be running them off for everyone that has requested one :)
 
Paul said:
Lol - She nearly knocked me out just now..... Lets just say it involved a lack of communication and a door.... and a foot....

And i have had a few messages..... The initial one is currently in the post to @Sgt GrizZ - Once he confirms that it's all good then I'll be running them off for everyone that has requested one :)
Click to expand...

Cheers Paul

Game wise ...this final version is identical to the final Beta I am currently running, just a few housekeeping/tidy ups to code Chad has added. I'll install tomorrow night if it arrives.:thumbs:
 
Absolutely LOVE that this guy is writing new code for old games, especially Data East. I love Data East games but they've always lacked decent code. I really hope he continues this with more games.

I think though a lot of the changes are quite subtle. What would be amazing if he could do major new rule sets, like what someone did with Cactus Canyon which became almost a whole new game.
 
PeteB said:
Absolutely LOVE that this guy is writing new code for old games, especially Data East. I love Data East games but they've always lacked decent code. I really hope he continues this with more games.

I think though a lot of the changes are quite subtle. What would be amazing if he could do major new rule sets, like what someone did with Cactus Canyon which became almost a whole new game.
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I think Chads thing is to take solid decent games, and improve them rather than ground zero rewrites. A game like Cactus Canyon was basically incomplete on release.

In the case of Tommy, the scoring is so much better balanced. Previously Multiball was really the only way for big points, and the modes were often overlooked due to comparatively lower scoring. Now many of them have been buffed, and combined with increased bonus and multipliers has introduced new focus and scoring strategies :)
 
Sgt GrizZ said:
I think Chads thing is to take solid decent games, and improve them rather than ground zero rewrites. A game like Cactus Canyon was basically incomplete on release.

In the case of Tommy, the scoring is so much better balanced. Previously Multiball was really the only way for big points, and the modes were often overlooked due to comparatively lower scoring. Now many of them have been buffed, and combined with increased bonus and multipliers has introduced new focus and scoring strategies :)
Click to expand...

Expanding on this, I was involved a little, back when he started with SW 20th anniversary. The whole thing came about because the ball save was accidentally found on Star Wars (where if you pull the ball out of the shooter lane and put it in the trough, you got the missing ball saver) and he worked out that it never showed in game due to a bug in the code that de-activated the ball save on the first switch press (at the top of the shooter lane - duh!) and he learnt enough about the Data East OS to make tweaks to the game rules and fix bugs.

Of course as soon as he announced the ball save fix, we all jumped on him with our requests to fix bugs, balance score and improve rules. Chad being the nice guy that he was worked on putting in most of our requests and got some involved in testing.

Since then he has moved on to doing other DE games (because he learnt the OS on DE games specifically) and it's great to see how much he has achieved.

I don't know if he will ever do re-writes, but I imagine there are PLENTY of bugs and tweaks for him to make on DE games to keep him busy for a long time.

Looks like Ive is having fun beta testing his Tommy code :thumbs:

Don't forget to send him a few paypal dollars as a tip if you use his code people :)
 
lukewells said:
Looks like Ive is having fun beta testing his Tommy code :thumbs:

Don't forget to send him a few paypal dollars as a tip if you use his code people :)
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Indeed. It was a great few months batting ideas back and forth about what needed changing, what worked, what didn't etc. You have to bear in mind that to an extent Chad had one hand tied with regard to some of the code, for example the video mode has been much improved but it was still not possible to implement all the ideas we would have liked due to the vagaries of the original code. I'm not techy but there were good reasons some stuff just could not be changed.

And yes , as @lukewells says - please make a donation if you use any of Chads ROMs.
 
Couple of new settings you guys might want to play with when you install 5.0.

Adjustment 48 - you can now get rid of the guaranteed Multiball Ready by Ball 3 :clap: So the player has to actually earn his multiball opportunity. Default now is Medium, spots 1 letter per ball - meaning the player will need to hit the mirror at least twice. My preference is for Hard, no letters spotted, you need to spell Tommy like a real man ... mummy won't always be there to hold your hand soldiers :cool:


Adjustment 48 - Multiball Ready Style

Original: Has no effect on the game. Game always spots 3 TOMMY letters between balls. Player is guaranteed to have TOMMY spelled by third ball.

Update: Controls how many TOMMY letters are spotted between balls as detailed below.

EXTRA EASY will spot 3 letters (0 letters after multi-ball) - This is same as game played in v.4.00.

Ball 1 = T

Ball 2 = TOMM

Ball 3 = TOMMY (Multi-ball ready)

EASY will spot 2 letters (0 letters after multi-ball)

Ball 1 = T

Ball 2 = TOM

Ball 3 = TOMMY (Multi-ball ready)

MEDIUM will spot 1 letter (0 letters after multi-ball) - This is the default

Ball 1 = T

Ball 2 = TO

Ball 3 = TOM

HARD will spot 0 letters always

Ball 1 = T

Ball 2 = T

Ball 3 = T

EXTRA HARD will spot 0 letters and will reset to T between balls (will reset to nothing after multi-ball)

Ball 1 = T

Ball 2 = T

Ball 3 = T


And Adjustment 51 is now an adjustable Ball Save :clap: The original Ball Save was active for 4 switch hits, you can now set for 1 to 9 switch hits.



Adjustment 51 - Proprietary

Original: No effect on the game.

Update: Renamed to “Ball Save”. Allows the player to control the amount of switches hit at start of ball before Ball Save is turned off. Range is 1 to 9. Default is 4.



And hey ...who's this wise guy at the #2 default high score :wave::D

IMG_0040.JPG
 
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