KNOWN ISSUES/BUGS

  • "The game seems to lock up when loading the images and sounds."

    Thus far I have only seen this with some Netscape versions. If you believe the download of sounds has stalled, minimize the window and then restore it. For some reason, this pushes the applet to continue loading the sounds.


  • "When running the plugin version, my sounds from Windows quit working."

    This is because of a possible bug in Sun's plugin. Try closing out all your browser windows. If you still see 'Duke' in your message bar, you may have to reboot to resolve this.


  • "I try to run the sound version, but get nothing but an empty browser window."

    Download and install the latest plugin at http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.3/jre/index.html.


  • "The game runs very slow and jerky"

    I am not sure why this is. It could be the browser, the amount of RAM, or perhaps the operating system. I have tested it on Microsoft Internet Exploroer (5.0, 5.5), Netscape 2.74, Windows98, WindowsNT, and Windows2000 with great results on systems as low as 400MHz CPU and 128M of RAM. Try another web browser would be my first suggestion.


  • "The ball goes right through my paddle sometimes (or does other strange things around the paddles)."

    I have seen this, but have yet to figure out why. It may be related to the timing in the game, or the vector of the ball, I don't know why. If it's any consolation, in real pinball games these things happen when the ball gets some spin on it. :)


  • "When I achieve the high score and then replay a game, the high score isn't reflected (OR, even worse, a lower score has replaced mine)."

    This is because the file that records the high score is cached. If you achieve an exceptional high score, I suggest you close all browser windows so you don't over write it. :) Also, I reset the high score whenever the version changes.


  • "The ball seems 'jumpy', especially when bouncing along near horizontal surfaces."

    Yep, this is a part of the game I cannot get rid of. Here is why. Collisions are detected when the ball intersects a wall. So, I move it back out from the wall a little bit before displaying it (so you don't see a ball jumping over the wall). But, now gravity is pulling it back into the wall. The math to do the move is complicated. The amount it moves it is dependant on the speed and amount of embedding. Given all the different combinations of speed and embed, I could not totally take the bounce out. It used to be worse. :)


  • "The ball at times deviates around a corner when it should have bounced off it"

    This is another thing that can't be helped. It is the nature of the game. The problem has to do with how the ball detects collisions and such. More on this and how to avoid it is in the tutorial.


  • "Sometimes the game starts without the background image."

    I believe this has something to do with having a animated gif. It appears Java only preloads the first frame but won't display it till it has it all. Try waiting longer and see if it appears, if not close out your browser and try again (cache problem).


  • "The ball frequently gets stuck somewhere."

    This is the fault of the designer. In my games I try to make sure there are no such places on the table where the ball will get stuck or get into a loop. In the event it does happen, use the nudge table keys to get out of it (x and .).

  • "This game is too hard and doesn't last as long as a normal pinball game."

    The game was designed as I wrote the program. Whenever I needed to test something, I put it somewhere in the game. I am not an expert at table design and I admit that some barriers in the game set the ball up to go right through the paddles.



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