MiSTer FPGA Forum

I've been playing devil's Crush for the past week and having an odd issue. The ball will appear to stick to the flipper (mostly if not exclusively) the left flipper. Sometimes it will cause you to lose a ball. I've tried a couple different controllers (wired and wireless), but I'm guessing it's not controller related because an observer can see it happen.
I don't recall it doing that on regular hardware, but it's been many years, so it might just be a bug/feature of the game. Any insights?

Thanks much.

Hey there, I played this game for a bit and couldn't reproduce this issue. I'm using a SN30 2.4Ghz wired straight to the USB hub.

Perhaps try remapping your controls and see if that fixes anything.

Thanks for the reply. I did try remapping, I'm on the latest build of the core (I tested with the last two), I also tried different controllers. I'm assuming if the issue is a visual (physics) glitch, and not a dropped (or repeated) input, that the issue would be something with the core or the ROM. Just a guess. had a game where I played for 30+ minutes (however long it takes to get to 24,000,000 points) and it issue happened ~5 times. other games it might happen once or not at all. I'm also playing on a CRT if that makes a difference.

Just an update, still having the issue. I tried reverting the TG16 core to a version from a year ago, no change. I also did an MD5 check of the ROM and Core just to make sure everything was ok.
I've noticed the issue of the ball sticking to the paddle is intermittent, some games it won't happen at all, other games it happens 3 times in five minutes. It happens far more often (or is more noticeable) when the ball speed is set to "slow". I've also noticed other physics issues with the movement of the ball (slowing or curving in unexpected ways), but again, very intermittent.

I play this game a lot on real hardware and on MiSTer and have never encountered anything like what you describe.

I'm new and this is my first post. Sorry if this is a newb answer. Could it be a bad rom? Is the rom zipped?

The ROM is not zipped. Just a .pce file (393 KB) MD5 is: 92FBE89D4C87BF283DBFBEAC69A64E6E
I might be able to record a video of it using my phone if there is a good way to share it. Tried playing on a DVI (Dell UltraSharp) same result.

Japanese or American region ?

Slartibartfast wrote: ↑Tue Mar 23, 2021 6:34 pm The ROM is not zipped. Just a .pce file (393 KB) MD5 is: 92FBE89D4C87BF283DBFBEAC69A64E6E
I might be able to record a video of it using my phone if there is a good way to share it. Tried playing on a DVI (Dell UltraSharp) same result.

Yup, this matches the Everdrive pack ROM, so the issue is probably not related to the ROM if everyone else is using the same one (likely).

dshadoff wrote: ↑Tue Mar 23, 2021 6:58 pm Japanese or American region ?

American (I assume) the text is in English.

I played the game for 30 minutes last night with zero issues. I used the same rom on SD card, HDMI and 128mb SDRAM.

I recored some video today using my phone pointed at my CRT. I'll upload it to YouTube and post a link here tomorrow. It did it 5+ times in two games (1.25 hours).

Here is the video of the issue ~1 minute. https://youtu.be/DcAHn_ic7AQ
Maybe this is normal behavior, It's harder to notice at the "fast" speed, but it definitely happens.
It is my first (and likely last) YouTube Video, so be sure to Like, Comment, and Subscribe! Also follow me on InstatCart...

I only ever play on fast-mode. I will play on slow to see if I get similar behaviour.

I played it for a while last night on slow and fast and did not encounter the problem ... maybe your game rom is corrupted somehow?

Hi. I've played this quite a bit on MiSTer, and I believe I've encountered what you're talking about. Ball physics are very good in this game, but not perfect. Long angled edges that are movable sometimes cause some weird things to happen with the ball, and if you try and wait until its at the very end of the paddles it will rarely do what you show here.

Another example is the bars that block the gutters on the left and right bottom. When they are in place blocking those chutes, you sometimes can become caught up on the edge and see some weird ball behavior as well, almost looking like its going into the walls at times. (timestamped example: https://youtu.be/dbY-evTrvsI?t=42 ) I also think I encountered the paddle issue once in this video, but I forget which part. IIRC it was towards the end. Always catches me off guard when it drops instead of going where expected, though it is pretty rare in my experience.

I don't believe this is exclusive to the MiSTer core. You must be playing this a ton to encounter it so often, or maybe using strategies that cause it to happen more. In a game like this there are several different techniques you can use so I can see why many people have reported not seeing this before. I only play on fast speed, so perhaps its just more common on slow speed.

Slartibartfast wrote: ↑Mon Mar 15, 2021 12:15 am I've been playing devil's Crush for the past week and having an odd issue. The ball will appear to stick to the flipper (mostly if not exclusively) the left flipper. Sometimes it will cause you to lose a ball. I've tried a couple different controllers (wired and wireless), but I'm guessing it's not controller related because an observer can see it happen.
I don't recall it doing that on regular hardware, but it's been many years, so it might just be a bug/feature of the game. Any insights?

Thanks much.

Can you close out your open ticket on the github tracker for the core please?

This happens on original hardware for sure. You can see it referenced in section 6 of this FAQ for the original game: https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/tg16/5889 ... faqs/51483