I was reading a thread on here, and saw people talking about our good friend, the Subway glitch. (You know, the one where you play for tips in the Subway and get them at a RIDICULOUS pace?) This made me think of a file I had seen somewhat recently, so I dug into the code and found it again.
Long Story Short: I think I found the cause of the Subway bug...
Please note that this information is valid for my patch level (1.34).
First off, just so you know, I'll use game terminology here. Here's a quick rundown of the terms:
Check = When the game looks at the coding to see if it should tip you.
Base amount = The initial number for a Level/Composition, which can be changed depending on bonuses.
Money Per Level = How much money you earn per tip, per level. This is the base amount, and can be changed.
Money Per Composition = Same as above, except for each composition played.
Okay, first of all, here's a table comparing the information I'll be discussing.
| | Guitar | Bass | Piano | Drums | Subway |
| Money per Composition | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 10 |
| Money per Level | 3 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 3 |
| Time between Checks | 6 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 2 |
So, the first thing that jumps out at you is the absurd Money per Composition. You earn 5 times as much! That explains why Metro's tips in the One Sim Band LTW Article were so large:
50 Compositions Played. $103,606 earned. $8634/hour.
100 Compositions Played. $188,292 earned. $15,691/hour.
250 Compositions Played. $515,216 earned. $42,993/hour.
Next is the time between Checks. It's only two minutes! Which means that even if it was a 50/50 chance to get a tip (there's a few variables that alter the Base Amount), you're getting that chance opportunity so often it's almost not funny. Seriously, I think that within ten sim-minutes, you're looking at around 3 tips on average. So on speed one, in ten RL seconds, you'll get around 3 tips. Come on, even the Bass/Drums/Piano, which has a lower Check rate than the Guitar, does Checks in a reasonable amount of time.
So, in a brief conclusion, what you can see:
- Five times the reward for compositions played
- Check Time
- Surprisingly, Money per Level doesn't change at all throughout the playing for tips.
(Note to S3PE users, if you want to check for yourself, I used the "Subway+PlayForTips", "Piano+Watch", "Guitar+Watch", "Drums+Watch" and "BassGuitar+Watch" XML files to find this information)
