Return of the Jedi High scores resetting

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CWagz21
Posts: 7
Joined: Wed Feb 26, 2020 1:06 pm

Return of the Jedi High scores resetting

Post by CWagz21 »

Hi,

I was referred here by customer support over at Arcade1Up. I have the Star Wars cabinet and everything works fine except the high scores on Return of the Jedi. They randomly reset and I can’t pinpoint the exact cause. I understand there are two sets of high scores, “all-time” and “daily”. They daily scores work as expected, but the all-time scores do not. They reset at odd times. Sometimes after completely shutting down the cabinet and other times it happens when migrating between games without ever turning the cabinet off. I’ve gone through 2 pcb’s and have had the same issue with both. Is this a known issue and can anything be done?
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CodeMystics
Posts: 539
Joined: Mon Oct 13, 2014 3:22 pm

Re: Return of the Jedi High scores resetting

Post by CodeMystics »

CWagz21 wrote: Wed Feb 26, 2020 1:26 pm Hi,

I was referred here by customer support over at Arcade1Up. I have the Star Wars cabinet and everything works fine except the high scores on Return of the Jedi. They randomly reset and I can’t pinpoint the exact cause. I understand there are two sets of high scores, “all-time” and “daily”. They daily scores work as expected, but the all-time scores do not. They reset at odd times. Sometimes after completely shutting down the cabinet and other times it happens when migrating between games without ever turning the cabinet off. I’ve gone through 2 pcb’s and have had the same issue with both. Is this a known issue and can anything be done?
Hi,

Thanks for your inquiry. Yours is the only report we've had of this problem, so it seems very unusual that you've encountered it on two separate units. It suggests that there's something unique about your usage pattern that's triggering the problem. We'd like to ask some questions to try to understand what makes your situation unique.

To define some terms we'll use:

"Session": a session starts when you enter Return of the Jedi and ends when you next see the main menu

"Power cycle": starts with power on, ends with power off

On to the questions:
  1. Have you ever seen the scores reset within the same session? (e.g. you enter your initials, go again without exiting, but by the time you enter your initials the second time, the first one was gone?)
  2. Have you ever seen the scores reset within the same power cycle? (Sounds like yes.)
  3. Roughly what score did you earn when this happened?
  4. What starting score did you select?
  5. Roughly how many entries in the "All-Time" score board were NOT factory default before it reset? (All? Some?)
  6. Did they all reset or was it just some of them?
  7. Did they reset to factory defaults or to 0?
  8. The only legitimate reason for scores to reset is if they end up out of order (lower number above higher number), are not in the range 0-99,999,999 or have initials that contain something other than A-Z or a space. Did you ever see this prior to them resetting? If so, do you know how it happened?
  9. Hypothetically, if something caused the scores to be invalid, it's not necessarily the last score earned that could've been a problem, but some other score during the same session. The scores are only checked for validity at the beginning of the next session, so a reset to factory values for this reason wouldn't happen until the next session. Was there anything unusual about other games' scores in that session or the initials entered?
  10. Typically what is the game doing when you turn off the power? How long after entering your initials, or after exiting to the main menu or settings before you turned off the power?
  11. Once they start resetting, do they reset every power cycle, or is it still random? (We're wondering if a badly-timed power-down damaged the file system, which might have lasting effect.)
  12. Did the game do anything that would be considered buggy behaviour before the score disappeared? (Freeze, screen corruption, etc.?)
  13. Do you play on something other than default settings?
  14. How long do you typically leave the machine on?
  15. How long do you typically leave it idle in the session? In the main menu?
  16. Had you entered the Return of the Jedi settings before this happened, even if you didn't choose to reset the high score while in there?
  17. Is there a chance that someone else may be going into the settings menu and resetting the scores on you at a time you wouldn't have noticed? (Please forgive the question, but as you're the only person that has reported this problem and yet you've apparently experienced it on two separate units, we have to rule out "foul play" so to speak.)
CWagz21
Posts: 7
Joined: Wed Feb 26, 2020 1:06 pm

Re: Return of the Jedi High scores resetting

Post by CWagz21 »

Answers to questions:

1. No
2. Yes
3. All 10 scores were above 600,000 the last couple times. The first few times it occurred scores were set around 100,000 or so.
4. It’s reset after playing games on easy, medium, and hard.
5. I’ve seen it reset with as little as 2 scores not default but mostly it has occurred with all scores “not default”.
6. All
7. Factory default
8. No
9. I don’t believe so, but it’s possible in some instances.
10. I usually turn off the power a few seconds after exiting to the main menu where you can select between the 3 games. I wait until the score has been shown, then back out after the next game is asking what difficulty I’d like to start at. Sometimes the children will shutoff the system immediately after their game has ended or even during the game. However, at this point they do not attain any new high scores as I populate the entire board myself. They can however attain the “daily rebel forces scores”.
11. I’ve had it occur back to back power cycles only once or twice. Most of the time It won’t happen for again for multiple power cycles.
12. I’ve never had any buggy behavior at all.
13. Yes I do. I’m not at the machine right now, but I believe it’s 5 lives, medium difficulty, and an extra life every 40,000 points.
14. Most of the time it’s only on for 15-40 minutes. I’ve left it on for a few hours at a time during parties or get together a though.
15. My son leaves it idle in “Star Wars” often. It rarely sits in idle in “Return of the Jedi”. There have been a few times that we turn it on for people to play when we have guests and it will sit at the main menu for awhile until automatically starting a demo of “Star Wars”.
16. I’ve told the children not to enter the settings menu however I can’t account for this while they’ve been on the system while I’ve been absent. I can say the settings menu on return of the Jedi has never been entered anytime the scores have reset while I’ve been present.
17. There’s a chance for about half of the malfunctions. I have witnesses of it occurring within power cycles while no one has entered any settings menu. It’s occurred numerous times just switching from game to game without entering the settings menus.

I’ll try to get another video of it occurring, but capturing the exact moment has been a little difficult.

Thanks,
Chris
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CodeMystics
Posts: 539
Joined: Mon Oct 13, 2014 3:22 pm

Re: Return of the Jedi High scores resetting

Post by CodeMystics »

Hi again,

Thanks for the prompt and concise answers. In talking with the Tastemakers team and our own, the only thing we can come up with is to add diagnostics to your machine so that, if/when it happens again, we'll be able to pinpoint the cause more exactly. With that information, we (or the Tastemakers team, depending on what the cause is determined to be) can then hopefully fashion a solution.

There is a downside to this:

First, if we update your machine with these diagnostics, it will wipe all data, which means all scores and settings for all games will again reset to defaults, same as if the PCBA had been replaced. (If after that, we're able to offer a fix, the fix will again wipe the machine.)

Second, to update your machine you will need to be willing to download software to your computer (link), open up the machine, attach a cable between your machine and the computer (a micro-USB cable, similar to what you'd use to plug in a PlayStation 4 or Xbox controller, or certain brands of mobile phones; let us know if you have such a cable or not), then use the software to update your machine's firmware.

Once installed, if the scores get lost again, the firmware will report details regarding the reason it happened. You'd provide these details to us and we'd use it to fashion a solution.

If these steps are agreeable to you, let us know. If you tell us you'd like to go ahead with this, we'll begin preparing the diagnostic version of the firmware, which would then be available about a week after we hear from you.

We can provide more detailed instructions, if you're interested.

Either way, we will continue to try to reproduce the problem ourselves, guided by your responses above, but to date no one at Tastemakers or Code Mystics has been able to see the problem you are reporting.
CWagz21
Posts: 7
Joined: Wed Feb 26, 2020 1:06 pm

Re: Return of the Jedi High scores resetting

Post by CWagz21 »

We can give this a try. I do have multiple mini usb cables. I’m assuming the cable must be able to supply power as well as data correct? I’ll just await further instructions when the firmware is ready to go.
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CodeMystics
Posts: 539
Joined: Mon Oct 13, 2014 3:22 pm

Re: Return of the Jedi High scores resetting

Post by CodeMystics »

Thank you. Customer service should be in touch privately as soon as things are ready.

(Yes the cable supplies power in download mode. The unit power should be unplugged during the process. You'll get more detailed instructions.)
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CodeMystics
Posts: 539
Joined: Mon Oct 13, 2014 3:22 pm

Re: Return of the Jedi High scores resetting

Post by CodeMystics »

Good news!

After creating our diagnostic version, we ran some tests ourselves and were able to identify the cause of your problem. It appears to be a 1 in 256 chance of a new score creating a situation where the scores would fail to reload next time you ran the game. Guess you play Return of the Jedi and earn high scores a lot more than most people! :)

So, rather than giving you a diagnostic version of the firmware, we'll be able to save you a step and give you the fixed version of the firmware in the first go.

We'll be supplying the fix to Arcade1Up in the coming week, and once it's been verified by them, Customer Service will reach out to you with the details of how to update the firmware in your machine, as promised.
CWagz21
Posts: 7
Joined: Wed Feb 26, 2020 1:06 pm

Re: Return of the Jedi High scores resetting

Post by CWagz21 »

Awesome! I’ll wait for the firmware update. Thanks for really caring about your customers. I’m glad to know there are still companies out there like yours.
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CodeMystics
Posts: 539
Joined: Mon Oct 13, 2014 3:22 pm

Re: Return of the Jedi High scores resetting

Post by CodeMystics »

Hi, just wanted to see if you've heard from Arcade1Up customer support on the replacement?
CWagz21
Posts: 7
Joined: Wed Feb 26, 2020 1:06 pm

Re: Return of the Jedi High scores resetting

Post by CWagz21 »

I haven’t heard anything from them yet. I checked my junk mail just to be safe.
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