Shock Troopers Mathematics 301

General discussion on MAME, MARP, or whatever else that doesn't belong in any of the other forums

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GHEMANT
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Post by GHEMANT »

I try to search informations in notes of Gamest magazine about old ST score.

But chance of found some good info is <20%
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BBH
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Post by BBH »

GHEMANT wrote:I try to search informations in notes of Gamest magazine about old ST score.

But chance of found some good info is <20%
Understandable if you can't, information on this game is hard to come by. :\

Anyway, goal accomplished.

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And I still could've gotten more points on Valley 4 despite the Milky suicide. Oh well. MAYBE I will try for 32 million later.

Playback with -bios 5 (Japan MVS Ver. 3)
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Weehawk
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Post by Weehawk »

BBH wrote:Anyway, goal accomplished.

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=D>

Although I don't think there was ever a lot of doubt about it.
John Cunningham (JTC)
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Post by Chad »

bravo to the max! yeah no doubt in my mind, er especially when the japanese rom was so much better to play and requires so much more knowledge to solve to beat the gamest record :) It is interesting with blood on i don't see any blood.
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Post by destructor »

=D>
Booooor :-#
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Post by BBH »

destructor wrote:Booooor :-#
you find this boring but have no problem with the Shinobi leeching. Whatevs dude!
Chad wrote:It is interesting with blood on i don't see any blood.
ironic, isn't it? Because killing enemies that cause one of the blood animations = a loss of points, except in cases of enemies that never drop items for close-range attacks (such as the ones standing outside the water in Valley 4).

Thanks guys, I'm surprised I was able to get this done much faster than I expected. It's pretty funny because I was stuck at the 29.5 million mark for such a long time and felt like I could never make any more progress. Then I find out about the multi-shot thing in water, and the suicide one team member idea, and it all comes together.

I still am curious if JKP-ACE or anyone else ever managed a higher score though.
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Post by destructor »

BBH wrote:
destructor wrote:Booooor :-#
you find this boring but have no problem with the Shinobi leeching. Whatevs dude!
When I enter to stage 2-1 on Shinobi I have big problem with my nerves ;)
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Post by BBH »

played a couple games at Ground Kontrol on Saturday, got 31,166,100 or thereabouts. Probably would have been a new record if I hadn't gotten red gem'd at the worst possible moment on the last stage. Missed close-range kill on one of the clawed minibosses too. Ehhhh.

31,302,300 on MAME tonight, fell short again. I think I got three red gems on Valley 4... christ almighty I hate red gems so much. Kept the inp but not going to post it since there's not much point. Did manage a new record on stage 1 at least... that reminds me that I need to compile best stage scoring data from the last couple games and figure out the maximum score range with blood based on these runs.

I'm glad I'm fairly consistent but 32 mil still seems so distant right now.

edit: okay, calculated my best scores by stage:

Jungle 1 - 6106000
Jungle 2 - 3477000
Jungle 3 - 5546800
Train - 1830000
Valley 4 - 7576500
Valley 5 - 4151500
BSG HQ - 3700500
Total - 32388300

That sounds about right.

Although... going back to my old score data from my runs with blood off, I see a Jungle 2 score of 3952500. Jungle 2 should be the one stage where scoring potential is identical, seeing that after the motorcycle part the rest of the stage is in the water. I think I need to dig through my old recordings and find the score I did that run in because an extra half million sure would come in handy, and I have no idea how the fuck I managed that! (obviously, this would raise the total potential score up to 32.8 mil)
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Post by BBH »

BBH wrote:I'm glad I'm fairly consistent but 32 mil still seems so distant right now.
Shut up, noob!

Just got 32,450,300. Three complete games in the 31.1-31.4 range, then I bust through with another million higher? Cool beans.

Breakdown by stage: 6012000, 3535000, 4857300, 1850000, 8376500, 4335500, 3488000. Valley 4 was clearly the highlight of this game, as I improved my old score for that stage by 800k. Wow. Also improved Jungle 2 by 58k (not taking into account old blood-off scores), Train by 20k, and Valley 5 by 184k. That's more improvements than I thought, but I am still performing way under my best on Jungle 3. Always room for improvement I guess.

Factoring in these new personal bests by stage, this would make for a possible score of 33,450,300... exactly one million above this score, weird. (with the old Jungle 2 score it comes out to 33,867,800, I may as well start counting that score among my bests by stage because it really SHOULD count, I think).

So now I gotta pull all this together and get 33 million. My work is never done! Gotta keep pressing on, for like Chad said, the love of the game.

Anyway, the inp. I recorded with -bios 3 (US) this time. Gameplay wise the game is identical on US or Japan, seeing how they both default to having blood turned on, and there are no other gameplay changes (believe me, I'd notice after the hundreds of hours I've spent playing this game). Maybe I'll stick with -bios 5 in the future just for the sake of consistency though.
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Post by destructor »

Next goal 33mln?
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Post by Chad »

congrats on demolishing the record, I look forward to more optimizing. America, F*** yeaaah! (oh crap now i'm going to be singing that south park song in my head for the rest of the week.)
-skito
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Post by BBH »

up to 32,703,800, a 250k improvement over the last score. Didn't improve any of the existing stage records, unfortunately. A few red gems managed to slip in too... how did this become a new record overall? Haha.

Thanks to my previous thread I was able to figure out which one of my old recordings from 2002 was the run in which I got 3952500 on Jungle 2. I watched it to see what I did on that stage in that run since I seem to be cursed with consistently getting in the 3.5 million range right now... and only picked up on one thing I should be doing differently, everything else looked more or less the same. I think I just had excellent luck in that run in regards to getting the 30k gems from close-range attacks. It's unfortunate, but luck is always going to play a part in these scores due to the fact that a lot of the score is entirely dependent on getting the 30k gem drops. Kinda like the whole random fruit thing in later boards of Ms Pacman (and that will be the last mention of that crap in this thread).

Another thing I wonder about in regards to maximizing points when the blood is on. There is one enemy death animation that lets you squeeze the most points out - when you pump them so full of lead that they literally explode. This happens after 13 shots, just like it would with blood off (or in the water stages). For the most part it seems random, but... could there be a way to trigger it more often? One thing I am pretty sure of is that it's impossible to get this animation if you are shooting at an enemy facing straight up or down. I have tried this and it always causes them to drop after one shot. There seems to be greater success when they are facing either at a diagonal angle or horizontal. I have a feeling that it also may be dependent on where you are shooting the enemy - when they are facing to the left or right, I seem to be able to trigger it if I shoot at the vertical edge of their body, around the feet. It also seems to happen very often on enemies that run away from you and face away - it seems to be possible to plug them repeatedly in the back. I could be completely imagining these things though and it may not be consistent at all. Methinks I need to research this further.
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Post by Chad »

nice, i'm a true noob when commenting this game, but it does seem like the water levels are more horizontal than vertical, maybe this is why you can get the pump full of lead effect more so on them and not just because they are in the water level? I'll need to playback investigate further but it was a quick thought.
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Post by mahlemiut »

No, it's just the fact that they're in water, rather than on land. Check Valley 4 (stage 5) and you'll see the difference with enemies on land as well.
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Post by BBH »

Pang is stupid, so I decided to play this instead. No new record, but I did manage a VERY nice score on Jungle 2 - 4202500 points, beating the old mark by 250k. I guess that would raise the theoretical max to 34 million? Blah, I should've had a 33 million game this time but everything after Jungle 2 was awful. Too lazy to post the inp, maybe I'll do that later.

Going to GK tomorrow, after which I can say I've broken the world record on an arcade machine (hopefully) :)
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