Important Disclaimers

This page will explain a few important disclaimers about the Saving Wallden table. Most of these pertain to game logic / design choices that may deviate from most traditional pinball games.

Ball Search (Stuck or Missing Balls)

Despite being an original ROM-less table, Saving Wallden has a ball search feature.

If your ball goes missing or gets stuck, do not nudge the table, and leave your flippers down. Otherwise, you risk taking health damage from nudging too hard and/or causing mode timers to run out. The ball search will activate after 10 seconds of no flipper or switch activity when flipper/switch activity is expected.

Ball search runs in 3 stages as follows, stage 1 starting within 10 seconds of no activity:
 

Stage	Description
1	Table silently re-counts the number of balls in the trough. If the number is not in agreement with what the table thinks is the number of balls in play, the table will fix its internal count accordingly and run drain routines where necessary. Ball search will also end. If the numbers are in agreement, ball search continues to stage 2 after another 5 idle seconds.
2	Lovinity (the Archangel) appears on screen to tell the player she will look for their ball. Simple solenoids will fire. If the ball is not recovered after 2 rounds, ball search goes to stage 3.
3	All solenoids will fire sequentially, including for the flippers, shaker motor, and every post drop target. This repeats indefinitely until the ball is recovered.

Mode timers and ball shield also freeze when the first stage of ball search begins, and they remain frozen until the ball is recovered. Ball shield will reset with at least 10 seconds if it is either under 10 seconds or has no time on it. This is because the ball, once recovered, may move in an unpredictable way at first. So the table is generous and offers a small shield to the player. The mode timer will also get 10 seconds added to it if it was active when ball search started, and to help prevent modes from expiring due to lost balls, modes will not actually end until the next switch hit once the mode timer expires.

Saving / Resuming Games

Your in-progress game is periodically auto-saved on major mode changes and when exiting the VPX player; the data is saved to ini files in your user folder. If you exited in the middle of a game, providing the game was not a tournament game, you can resume it the next time you load the table. You will be prompted via the Action Button after initialization if you want to resume the in-progress game.

Note that Scorbit is not supported for resumed games. 

Games played in tournament mode cannot be resumed as this would violate most tournament regulations. 

The save / resume functionality of Saving Wallden is especially useful for recovery from script errors and crashes, or if you wish to stop in the middle of a game and resume later (considering the game play can be long).

Keep in mind if you were in the middle of a mode or multiball, it will not resume when resuming the game. However, it will usually be marked off internally as completed where applicable. There are a few exceptions:

• FINAL BOSS: You will have to start this battle over again as you cannot progress to Final Judgment without succeeding.
• Mini-bosses from CASTLE: You will have to start these battles over again as you cannot progress to the next phase of CASTLE without succeeding.
• BLACKSMITH boss battle (KILL): The BLACKSMITH will FLEE (purple status / failed kill) if you exit and resume. This ruins both hero and massacre runs. 
• Any mini-wizard for an objective under SPARE (except BLACKSMITH): The objective will be marked completed under KILL (red) as-if you failed to SPARE them.

The following anti-cheat measures are in place to help prevent abuse of the saving / resuming system:

• If the game exited on a script error or in the middle of ball search, the current player resumes without penalty in normal mode.
• If the game was exited in skillshot before the ball was launched out of the shooter lane (if it was launched, it is considered "in play" even if it hadn't hit a switch yet), the current player resumes without penalty in skillshot mode.
• If the game was exited when the player's only ball was in the shooter lane (but not attempting a skillshot), the current player resumes without penalty in normal mode.
• If the game was exited after the ball was drained and before the next player started, the next player resumes in skillshot mode.
• Else, to prevent cheating, it is assumed the game was terminated in the middle of play, thus resuming the game results in the current player taking a drain penalty, and the game resumes on the next player.

Wallden uses ini files instead of the VPX registry to track games for a couple reasons:

• The VPX registry is slow and causes the game to freeze when saving to it (especially when many files need saved)
• All the data Wallden saves would make the registry grow substantially in size
• ini files are easier to delete if you don't want the saved game anymore

With that being said, high scores are still saved / loaded via the VPX registry.

Crossbow (Captive Ball) Standup Behavior

Most targets, like the TRAIN and +HP targets, can be hit in multiples at the same time should the ball strike in the middle of two targets. And the game will acknowledge you hit both targets.

However, this behavior is not the case for the crossbow standup targets; only the first one you hit will be acknowledged as a hit if you hit multiple targets within less than 500 milliseconds of each other. There are multiple reasons for this:

• The crossbow shot was intended to be a precision shot.
• If multiple standups could be registered at the same time, combo shots would activate instantly since it would be registered as a double shot on the crossbow.
• If multiple standups could be registered at the same time, it would be too easy to collect super jackpots and defeat dragons in the DRAGON battles.

Player Switching

In multiplayer games, there are a few unconventional moments in the game where the player is switched in addition to when a player drains a ball; be aware of these (the table will call out the next player up when it happens):

• In POTION MOTION when playing cooperatively (co-op), each player will have a turn playing the pree-boss-battle feature. The amount of time each player gets will depend on the number of players playing; more players = less time.
• During the final boss battle when playing cooperatively (co-op), the game switches to the next player after each stage to allow every player an opportunity to contribute towards defeating the final boss.
• There may be other instances in Judgment / final wizard modes where players trade off as indicated.

Stacking Opportunities

Stacking is the ability to start more than one mode / multiball at the same time or to apply one or more bonuses / power-ups on top of each other or on top of modes / multiballs. Many modern pinball tables have stacking.

Due to the complexity of Saving Wallden's code and game rules, stacking opportunities are limited.

Bonus X

The end-of-game multiplier (spelling BONUSX via the bumper in-lanes) can be increased during any gameplay mode, including multiballs. However, the mini-wizard cannot be started except in normal gameplay.

Ball Shields / BLACKSMITH

BLACKSMITH can be spelled at almost any point in the game. While BLACKSMITH increases your Armor Class, it is worthwhile to know that it also activates or increases your ball shield time. And spelling BLACK or SMITH will remove poison from the respective outlane. Therefore, it may be worthwhile to have BLACKSMITH ready to be completed in one or a couple shots before starting an important multiball or dangerous objective.

BLACKSMITH mini-wizards cannot be started except in normal gameplay.

Power-ups

Power-ups can be collected, and then activated with the action button, during almost any mode / objective to boost your performance / success rate in those modes / objectives. And usually, you can collect and activate another power-up in the same mode / objective to stack its effect. See Basic Gameplay for more information.

Clocks / Grace Periods

Saving Wallden has a few grace periods in place to help players:

• General ball shield grace: When the ball shield clock expires, if a ball drains via the flippers within 3 seconds, it will still be shielded. This allows time for the ball to be recovered if it was bouncing on the center post.
• Outlane ball shield grace: If a ball triggers an outlane before the ball shield clock expires, so long as it drains within 5 seconds, it will be shielded. The ball must hit the outlane trigger before the clock expires; the general ball shield grace only applies to hitting the drain itself, not the outlane triggers.
• Last Hurrah: Several of the untimed multiball features in the game have a "Last Hurrah" grace period. When all but one ball has been drained, a 10-second mode timer will begin with a "Last Hurrah" callout. The multiball feature will continue until the 10 seconds runs out (or the last ball is drained), giving the player one "last hurrah" / chance to score points.

Saving Wallden also has a system where clocks will pause under certain conditions. The mode timer, ball shield, +HP drop target reset, and bumper diverter orbit clocks will pause when any of the following conditions are true:

• No balls are in play (e.g. all the balls drained and we are waiting for the trough to begin re-launching them)
• All the balls that are in play are inactive (e.g. held in a kicker / scoop, or awaiting to be launched from the plunger lane)
• During ball search

Additionally, every ramp, orbit, and horseshoe shot has an "entrance trigger gate". If a ball is detected entering the shot when that particular shot is lit for something on a time-limited basis, an extra 2 seconds will be added allowing the ball to complete the shot.

Ball Auto-fire / Ball Save Behavior

The logic for determining how to, and how many balls to, launch automatically as part of ball save is very complex. This is due to the table having two methods of draining: the trough drain and the center gobble hole (though the gobble hole sometimes brings a ball back into play via the shooter). A ball could drain down into the trough and the gobble hole at roughly the same time in a multiball. And furthermore, we may want the gobble hole balls to come back into play, but not the ones that drained into the trough, or vice versa. 

To reduce complexity on an already-complex system of tracking balls in play and balls needed to launch, the behavior for the trough release queue is different from most tables. Instead of tracking how many balls are left to queue, when the table wants to launch balls, the table tracks how many balls it wants in play and will keep releasing more balls until it reaches that number (even if other balls drain before it gets to the target). The caveat to this behavior is that even when there is no ball shield, if the table is auto-launching balls back into play, drained balls will keep getting saved until it reaches its target balls in play. In theory, players could cheat the table by extending their ball shield via draining at the last moment and continually draining thereafter. However, I feel because the trough release / auto-fire is quick on Wallden (about 1 ball every 1.25 seconds), this cheat is extremely hard to do and even harder to maintain for more than a couple balls.

Spelling Letters Only in Normal Game Play

Except for BLACKSMITH, +HP, and BONUSX, letters (which ready game features) cannot be spelled while playing modes or multiballs. Since there are only 6 letters to ready most game features, allowing the spelling of most objectives during modes / multiballs would make game play too easy.

Shield Light Between the Flippers

While the amount of ball shield time remaining is indicated under the in-playfield DMD on a segment display, there is a bright shield lamp between the flippers to give you a quick glance at your ball shield state. The lamp can be in various different states which have different meanings:

• Off - Drained balls will not come back into play. You will take drain damage if you drain your last ball in play.
• Flashing - There is a time limit on the ball shield. It will start flashing faster once your time drops below 10 seconds.
• Steady On - The shield is unlimited for the duration of the mode.
• Blue - Drained balls will come back into play without consequence.
• Yellow - Drained balls will come back into play, but there is a non-HP penalty for each drain.
• Red - Drained balls will come back into play, but you will take damage for every drain.
• Rainbow - This is a secret ball shield state ;)

Multiball-Heavy

Saving Wallden is a multiball-heavy table. There are a lot of game play features which run on a multiball. On a traditional balls-per-game table, having numerous multiballs can significantly increase game time and decrease difficulty as a player cannot "lose their ball" during multiball (they'd have to drain all of the balls).

However, because Saving Wallden uses a health system, and players can lose health even within a multiball, I do not believe the heavy multiball aspect of the game will significantly throw it off balance. Let the balls fly!

Randomization and Tournament / Competitive Play

Saving Wallden employs randomness to add variety to each game, such as changing the order of the TRAIN modes and SNIPER multiballs and the shots you need to aim for. However, Saving Wallden is tournament and competitive friendly.

In tournament play, the operator should specify a seed number and a forced difficulty setting in the table script (the GLOBAL_SEED constant and TOURNAMENT_MODE constant). Every player who plays Saving Wallden with the same seed number will get the same modes in the same order and the same shots to aim for every game. And the game will always play the difficulty specified in the force difficulty setting. There is also a separate leader-board specific for tournament scores which is only used and visible in the attract sequence when a force difficulty setting is used.

In non-tournament play, the operator can choose not to specify a seed (null). In this case, a seed is chosen based on the VBScript random number generator at the start of each new game, which randomizes the TRAIN modes, SNIPER multiballs, and shots. However, in competitive multiplayer, each player in the game will still get the same sequence of modes, chaser multiballs, and shots as the other players in the game. This is to ensure fair competition. This is not applicable in cooperative play since players share table progress.

The process for ensuring fair randomness works as follows:

• If a global seed is not specified, one is generated at the loading of the game using VBScript's random number generator.
• For each component of the game that uses randomness (e.g. skill shots, mode order, multiballs, mode shots, etc), a separate seed number is generated from / using the global seed. Each component will have a different seed number. These seed numbers will be the same across all games using the same global seed number if one is specified.
• All of the seed numbers for the components are copied across each player in the game (for competitive play). That way, seed numbers for each component can also be tracked separately for each player; what one player does will not affect the randomness of another player.
• Once a random number generated from a seed is no longer needed, the seed number for that player and component is changed procedurally by generating a new seed using a combination of the random number that was generated and the global seed. This means the sequence / order of seed numbers will be the same if you were to use the same global seed. And in turn, the random numbers generated will also have the same sequence and order. This ensures the randomness remains the same across all games using the same seed number, and therefore the game is tournament friendly.
  • A key technicality to note: in VBScript, if you re-seed using a previous seed, you risk eventually running into the same sequence of seeds / numbers. This is why, when making new seeds, we combine the old seed with the global seed. It helps reduce the chance we fall into a repeat sequence in VBScript.
• Since seed numbers are tracked independently for each player as well, each player in the same game will also get the same order of randomness, making competitive multiplayer play fair.

Let's put this into example:

• A new game was started between 3 players.
  • Player 1's first skill shot target is R.
  • Player 1 starts a mode. It ends up being Boomerang.
  • Player 1 loses their ball.
  • Player 2's first skill shot target is also R; the same as player 1.
  • Player 2 starts a multiball; Attack Wave.
  • Player 2 starts a mode; Boomerang (the same as Player 1).
  • Player 2 starts a second mode; sequential punches.
  • Player 2 ends their turn.
  • Player 3's first skill shot target is also R like players 1 and 2.
  • Player 3 starts a mode; It's Boomerang (the same as player 1 and 2's first mode).
  • Player 3 starts a multiball; Attack Wave (the same as player 2).
  • Player 3 starts their second mode; Sequential Punches (the same second mode as player 2).
  • Player 3 starts a second multiball; Hard Battle.
• As you can see, the randomness is repeated between each of the 3 players to ensure fair competitive play.
• Now let's say this is a tournament, and every game is using this same global seed. That means even on a new game, players will get the same order of modes and multiballs. So players' first skill shot would be target R, the first mode is Boomerang, second mode is Sequential Punches, first multiball is Attack Wave, second multiball is Hard Battle, and so on.

Note that if you use B2S, the global seed for the current game will show up on the backglass. This is important to capture for tournaments.

Rubber Posts Near the Outlanes

You may have noticed there are rubber posts near the outlanes which make it harder for the ball to drain down an outlane. While this makes players slightly less likely to lose a ball down an outlane, I made this design decision for three reasons:

• An outlane could have poison, which will not only deal you drain damage from draining, but will also increase the drain damage. The drain damage could increase even more when a player nudges too hard trying to keep the ball away. This is a fate worse than simply losing your ball via the outlane in most other games. Therefore, I felt outlanes should not be as easy to drain down.
• There are no outlane saves via kickbacks, magna saves, etc. Once it's gone, it's gone. The only way to save is to try nudging before it goes down.
• Though it's less likely the ball will drain down the outlane, the rubber posts make saving via nudging a bit more challenging as the ball trajectory becomes less predictable.

Center Post

I also made the decision to add a center post in Wallden. This is because the horseshoe shot and TRAIN standups would very commonly send balls straight down the middle. And unfortunately, there were no easy angle configurations to prevent this. Therefore I decided to add a center post (and slightly shorten the flippers so the game doesn't get too easy). It also adds a level of skill to the game.

General Game Difficulty

My goal is for Wallden to be an "easy to play, hard to master" game. Here is a general idea of the difficulty I aim for in Wallden (each is a score of 1 to 5 with 5 being most difficult):

• Ball speed: 4/5
• Slingshot force: 4/5
• Flippers: 3/5
• Outlanes: 3/5
• Nudge saves / tilting (although tilting does not exist in Wallden; nudges are a bit sensitive so be careful!): 4/5
• General Gameplay: 4/5
• Achieving Judgment: 5/5
• Achieving "Platinum Heart" judgment: It's over nine thousand!!!
  • There are other, easier final wizards you can get. But I made a final wizard so insanely difficult to achieve that you would have to quite literally be the god of pinball to get it (e.g. have a perfect run on Impossible difficulty).