Midway Touchmaster Solitaire Bug Analysis – MAME 0.140

OVERVIEW

In the Touchmaster games by Midway, there is a bug which renders the Solitaire subgames unplayable. After a specific action is taken (the same one in every case), the game crashes and displays the same crash behaviour onscreen, regardless of version.

The analysis will show that ArcadeDude's contention that this is a random bug is incorrect, and that the bug information on MameTesters requires immediate updating.

The evidence will also show that this is NOT an in-game bug. This is clearly an emulation bug.


SYSTEM SPECS and MAME VERSION

The game was tested on an Intel i5 Quadcore Processor, 64 bit, running Windows 7

MAMEUI64 v.0140 was used to load the games and record the inp files
The enclosed nvram files are required for the inp files to load correctly


METHOD

Two games of each version of solitaire (1 flip and 3 flip) from the romsets tm,tm2k,tm3k,tm4k,tm5k,tm7k and tm8k were played and recorded.

from tm2k onwards there are two versions of Solitaire for each romset included in the Touchmaster games (a “High Score” or “Super” version was added by Midway in each case). Each was tested on both 1flip and 3flip settings just like the “Classic” versions.

So, apart from romset “tm” - every other romset has four tests attached.


THE GAME

The rules of “Solitaire” are well known; the game is sometimes known in the UK as “Patience”, and sometimes in the US as “Klondike”. All Windows computers have this game included (Games>Solitaire), and the included help file upon loading this game should clear up any questions regarding the basic rules. The basic rules are also included in the Touchmaster games by pressing the “Help” button on the Solitaire subgame screen.

Central to the game, however, is removing cards from the board so as to create empty columns in which a King can be placed (no other card is allowed into an empty column).

It is impossible to complete the game without emptying any columns, as that is the objective. The columns are rearranged and emptied by moving cards down onto the four suited build piles (each built up from Ace to King).




ANALYSIS

The bug is not random in any way. In every test, the following behaviour was observed to happen EVERY time, and in EVERY version of the game – whether that be “Super” or “High Score” or “Classic”, or “1 flip” or “3 flip”:

   1. Whenever a column is emptied by the player, the game freezes


   2. After a short while during the freeze, a column of a frozen pack of cards is displayed down the screen in line with the column that was emptied


   3. If the player was moving a card/cards to another column, those cards will appear in the correct place when the line of cards is displayed. Then nothing happens.


   4. If the player was moving a card to the build pile, nothing appears to happen when the frozen line of cards is displayed – but if one waits for a significant amount of time, the card will travel down the screen at an excruciatingly slow rate (Press F10 to speed this up and observe this behaviour) until it settles into the designated build pile. Then nothing happens.


   5. It does not matter which columns are emptied. During the tests, each of the first four columns were emptied at some point and, without exception, the above behaviour was observed. It is reasonable to assume that columns 5,6 and 7 would also exhibit the same behaviour had they been emptied. [These are harder to empty - as each column, from left to right, contains progressively more cards to remove]


   6. There were no other crashes/freezes during any test. The bug is NOT random in any way.




[Anecdotal evidence: I have played most of the Touchmaster subgames in each version – no other subgames, specifically card games, seem affected by this bug]


CONCLUSIONS

Every version of Solitaire on every version of Touchmaster fails when emptying any column

While it is possible that Midway accidentally left a broken subgame in every version of their Touchmaster series, this is inconceivable for these two reasons:

   1. New versions of Solitaire were added by Midway – a tester would have spotted that the new version was just as unplayable as the Classic version. Solitaire is also a popular card game – several disgruntled arcade owners would moan to Midway about having to reset the machine upon the inevitable crashing whenever someone tried to play it.


   2. Every version is affected, suggesting a problem in the Touchmaster core driver which is common to every game


   3. The nature of the crash suggests a poorly emulated special effects routine whenever a column is emptied. This would require further verification, however.




TESTER: Paul Stubbs, aka JazzX