Here are some important disclaimers about how the Saving Wallden game works. In particular, many of these behaviors differ from most other original Visual Pinball X games of the modern solid-state era.
A large majority of original VPX table authors do not take the time to code a "ball search" function. However, Saving Wallden is an exception.
If your ball gets stuck or goes missing, then leave the table alone. Do not nudge or flip the flippers until the ball is freed. The table will automatically enter "ball search" after 10 seconds without any activity.
Mode timers and ball shield also freeze when 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.
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.
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 very 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:
The following anti-cheat measures are in place depending on how the game exited to help prevent abuse of the saving/resuming system:
Wallden uses ini files instead of the VPX registry to track games for a few reasons:
With that being said, high scores are still saved/loaded via the VPX registry.
Saving Wallden uses randomness to add variety to each game, such as changing the order of the TRAIN modes/SNIPER multiballs and the shots you need to aim for. However, Saving Wallden is tournament and competitive friendly. Here's how:
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.
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, 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:
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:
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 when it happens):
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. But there are a few features which can be stacked on other ones.
This is the primary feature that can be stacked. The HP multiball can be progressed, and started on top of, any other feature, including other multiballs and even wizard modes. While the HP multiball is not a particularly note-worthy multiball, it can be the determining factor behind whether you live or die in a battle or feature. That's because its primary function is to give you some HP and potentially also reduce your drain damage.
Ideally, you should ready the third ball lock prior to starting the feature or battle on which you want to stack the HP multiball. Be careful not to lock the third ball until after you start your desired feature.
Note that you cannot stack other features onto HP multiball; you can only stack HP multiball on other features. This means if you start HP multiball in normal game play, you cannot progress any other non-stackable feature during HP multiball. However, as an incentive, if you start HP multiball in normal game play, then you will have more available jackpots to earn HP.
The end-of-game multiplier (spelling BONUS X 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.
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 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 (TODO: link) Basic Gameplay for more information.
Saving Wallden has a few grace periods to help players:
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 it 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.
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.
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:
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 because 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!
You may have noticed that there are rubber posts near the outlanes. While this makes players slightly less likely to lose a ball down an outlane, I made this design decision for three reasons:
I also made the decision to add a center post in Wallden. This is because the horseshoe shot and TRAIN standups would very often 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. You have to decide when to let the ball bounce off of the center post versus trying to flip-save it.
Saving Wallden was meant to be a very difficult game to complete. For this reason, I have plenty of mini-wizards for accomplishing each objective as you progress towards JUDGMENT (the victory wizard). Achieving JUDGMENT alone is very difficult. However, there are seven possible JUDGMENTs that you can receive depending on how you play the game. Two of them are so insanely difficult to get (but not impossible) that I wouldn't be surprised if no one gets them for years after the release of Saving Wallden.
If you enjoy the challenging nature of tables like Total Nuclear Annihilation, then you might enjoy Saving Wallden. While the gameplay of Saving Wallden is much longer and deeper than TNA, it is still a real challenge to get through all of the objectives.