Deyvi Espinal - Alpha-Omega Technician
Here is a tip that anyone with Fishbowl Frenzy can use if they ever run into an issue with the big bowl opto sensor.
The big bowls sensors are the sensors that let the game know when the play is over. If these are malfunctioning the game will not work properly. The game will act as if the guest pressed the start button and didn't land the ball in any of the bowls with prizes. It will give the guest mercy tickets within 2 seconds after swiping their card.
Opening the game and doing the opto test on these sensors helped me understand a bit more of what's the purpose of each sensor in the game. The big bowls happen to have 2 opto sensors. The top sensor on the bowl is there to have the fish do an animation when the ball passes through it. The bottom one is to let the game know that the play is over and it's time for the game to pay the tickets owed to the guest. When my bottom sensor went bad, I tried something that worked perfectly fine. I noticed that both sensors are the same. They just don't have the same duties. I ended up switching the bad sensor with the good sensor. Since the top sensor is just there for the interaction and animation, I figured it wouldn't hurt to just run the game without the fish jumping around for a week or so. After switching these sensors, I tested the game and the game worked just fine. I didn't get any errors or complaints about the game malfunctioning again.