1941 is become harder

Francois Daniel · Post by **Francois Daniel** » Wed Nov 26, 2003 4:46 pm

Hello

I just try 1941 and 1941j on mame 77 and I see Difficulty is now on 4 (normal) for 0 (Easiest) in the former versions.

So, what is the policy on marp in this case ? It's clear scores made on 1941 are all made on difficulty 0 and will become very difficult to beat now.

Marp rule said use default setting. So, we must play with this new default setting (I mean its the factory setting), and in this case, what we'll do with old scores ?

Francois

zlk · Post by **zlk** » Wed Nov 26, 2003 8:52 pm

In mame v77 the default difficulty is 3 instead of 0, which was the difficulty in an older mame versions I tested. I am not sure what to do. There are currently 53 1941 and 1941j recordings. Zeroing them all might be a bit harsh. I would suggest to play at the difficulty level everyone else plays at. One thing to think about: if the 53 recordings are zero'd and the mame v78 the difficulty goes back to 0, what will be done with the v77 recordings? Will the older recordings become "un-zero'd"?

The TJT · Post by **The TJT** » Thu Nov 27, 2003 12:26 am

Yes, this is irritating problem. Mame default difficulty changes. If game has had long time same default difficulty, and if old default dif happens to be same TG has, I would think same old difficulty should be used. No matter what new mame default is...

Just edit special game rules.

Really unfair if settings change to more easy suddenly.
Has happened before at puzzledepon, Paperboy, Marble etc.

BBH · Post by **BBH** » Thu Nov 27, 2003 9:01 am

zlk wrote:In mame v77 the default difficulty is 3 instead of 0, which was the difficulty in an older mame versions I tested. I am not sure what to do. There are currently 53 1941 and 1941j recordings. Zeroing them all might be a bit harsh. I would suggest to play at the difficulty level everyone else plays at. One thing to think about: if the 53 recordings are zero'd and the mame v78 the difficulty goes back to 0, what will be done with the v77 recordings? Will the older recordings become "un-zero'd"?

I don't think they would lower the difficulty back down, because it's very unlikely that the actual factory settings in the arcade was Level 0. Then again, you really never know what the MAME team is going to do...

Zero'ing all the recordings does seem a bit harsh. But leaving the old settings as the official MARP settings doesn't make for good competition. What to do? :\

oh, and 1941 isn't the only Capcom game that's been changed in terms of difficulty. I don't have time to test everything, but I do know that UN Squadron used to default to easiest difficulty, and now has been bumped up to "Normal" too. (which certainly explains how so many people were able to finish it back in that Knockout tournament.)

Francois Daniel · Post by **Francois Daniel** » Thu Nov 27, 2003 9:24 am

BBH wrote: I don't think they would lower the difficulty back down, because it's very unlikely that the actual factory settings in the arcade was Level 0. Then again, you really never know what the MAME team is going to do...

I think someone of mame dev obtain official factory settings because I received doc from 1941 yesterday by a friend. And level 4 is the factory setting. So I really think, this setting stay in further version of mame.

I insert here picture of this doc.

Francois

Luja · Post by **Luja** » Thu Nov 27, 2003 6:25 pm

The difficulty of cps1.c was changed to factory settings.
There were many games in this driver that has "easy" difficulty instead of normal (Mame normally uses the "medium" difficulty, which used to be the factory's difficulty; so more changes can come. Although the driver's writer has the autority to set the dips), and were indeed too easy ones.

I changed the difficulty, lifes and bonus lifes on cps1.c when the dip&control section was cleaned and corrected (version 71 or so)

In 77 cabal was changed to medium difficulty too.

Haze · Post by **Haze** » Fri Nov 28, 2003 7:52 pm

the general policy i go by is 'sensible defaults' in most cases that means the middle values, sometimes the suggested defaults aren't really sensible at all.

other than that mame has a couple of checks, demo sounds must be on by default for example

Obviously this info is only applicable to games which used dipswitches, for games which use eeprom providing the defaults it restores them to on initial startup are sensible enough we don't touch them