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 4 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 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. The table will try 4 times to locate the ball before moving to stage 4.
4	All the solenoids fire quickly and rapidly, and the shaker motor shakes intensely, as a final attempt to find the ball. This happens for 15 seconds. If the ball is still not found, go to stage 5.
5	Table considers the ball as not recoverable. Game is paused and the table instructs the player to get the table operator to manually recover the ball.

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.

"Missing Ball" state

If the ball search cannot find or dislodge the ball after 5 cycles, then the machine enters "missing ball" state. In missing ball state, the table sits idle with the flippers frozen and the 10-second ball shield timer remaining on and frozen. The table instructs the operator to remove the playfield glass, dislodge the stuck ball, and let it drain. When drained, the game will exit missing ball state, put a ball in the shooter lane (but not launch it), and resume normally.

In VPX, you would use the manual ball control to dislodge the stuck ball at this point. You can alternatively close and re-open the game since this table has the ability to resume in-progress games. If a game is closed in ball search mode, no penalty will be assessed for closing and re-opening the game.

Why sit idle instead of launching a new ball?

This decision was made in favor of keeping tournament mode and competitive multiplayer play as fair as possible:

• If the ball search launched an emergency ball after 5 cycles instead of sitting idle, then the table is no longer able to operate some features / multiballs as normal as the trough is short one ball. This may cause an unfair advantage or disadvantage.
• If the ball search ended the current ball in play after so many cycles, this would be unfair to the player especially in solo non-tournament play. I believe letting the table sit idly until the ball is dislodged / drained, and then returning the ball to the shooter lane, is the most fair way to approach this.

Saving / Resuming Games

Your in-progress game is periodically auto-saved to the VP Registry on major mode changes and when exiting the VPX player. 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.

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 be marked completed under FLEE (purple) as-if you failed to kill him.
• 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, 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, if all 4 conditions above fail, 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.

Scorbit is disabled in resumed games because the Scorbit platform does not support resumed games.

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

The mechanism for saving game progress to the VP Registry has been optimized to minimize how long the game is "frozen" while saving, considering Visual Basic does not run async. This was done by keeping track of what the game thinks is in the VP Registry and only saving the key/value pairs it thinks have been changed.

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 multiple targets are hit within 250 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):

• When a player completes / finishes a wizard or mini-wizard, their turn is done and the next player is prompted to go up. Since Wallden game play can get long, this allows other players a chance to play without excessive downtime and for players to have a break.
• During the final boss battle, in co-op / cooperative play, the game switches to the next player after each completed stage to allow every player an opportunity to contribute towards defeating the final boss. This does not apply in competitive (standard) game play.

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. However, due to the complexity of Saving Wallden, only certain things can be stacked as detailed in this section.

Bonus X

The end-of-game multiplier (spelling BONUSX via the bumper in-lanes) can be increased during any gameplay mode, including multiballs.

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. 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.

Power-ups

Likewise, 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 2 seconds, it will still be shielded.
• 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 (such as CHASER and several mini-wizards) 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 / saucer, or awaiting to be launched from the plunger lane)

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 usually, but not always, 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 slightly 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, this cheat is 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, 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 consequence for every drain (non-HP related).
• Red - Drained balls will come back into play, but you will take damage for every drain.

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 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 CHASER 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. 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, CHASER 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 collaborative 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.

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.

General Game Difficulty

My goal is for Wallden to be a fairly difficult game overall. As such, ball action is very fast, and the slingshots are quite strong. The ball speed and slingshot force can be compared to Total Nuclear Annihilation (a notoriously difficult table)... however flipper, outlane, and overall gameplay difficulty (except for beating the game) is easier than TNA. 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: 2/5
• Outlanes: 3/5
• Nudge saves / tilting (although tilting does not exist in Wallden): 4/5
• General Gameplay: 4/5
• Achieving Final Judgment / any final wizard mode: 5/5
• Beating the game (achieving "God of Pinball"): 9001/5