tar's Saturn recording

[tar]

LN2 Wrote:

I have played it for 10-12 hour runs..but always stopped then.

Okay ,How in the hell!? he. he.- I hate that phrase
Do you have drug abuse issues too , seriously - I do. (being humble)
The only thing I remember about Track and field...
A lot of two player games at the arcade involving two people slaming the hell out of the keyboard trying to qualify.(what a sight to behold!)
After about 2 or 3 months of this,the tech at gold mine replaced the keys (buttons with new ones that had a raised backside on them so one could not hammer the buttons ) Ha!
That ended that

[Weehawk]

the tech at gold mine replaced the keys (buttons with new ones that had a raised backside on them so one could not hammer the buttons

We had found that if you took a pen or pocket-comb just the right length (some people had pieces of plastic cut specifically for this purpose), you could hold it between the buttons, using your fingers as a fulcrum between the buttons pressing slightly on one side, then tapping up and down as fast as possible on the other side (so that one button would be up when the other was down and vice versa) you could generate higher running speeds than was possible freehand.

I assumed that the raised plastic button-housing which was installed on the machines later was to prevent that.

John

[Weehawk]

I have played it for 10-12 hour runs..but always stopped then.

I was aware of your high scores on MARP and was making a little joke.

If you aren't familiar with Nibbler, check it out. It's one of the most demanding games around as far as concentration and number of moves per second and precision of moves etc.

Never liked it.

John

[LN2]

I was aware of your high scores on MARP and was making a little joke.

yes, but I was referring to doing it in an arcade. Actually the game plays easier overall in MAME.

The game itself is same difficulty but controlling just using small finger movements to press the keys for control isn't as taxing as having to deal with a joystick with movements at that speed for some reason.

Your hands start getting sore after several hours on a joystick moving at the rate of several times a second...plus that game in particular(at least the one I used to play) had an oversized joystick on it so you actually had to move it further than many joysticks so your whole arm got into the act.

1 game that I would say is even more taxing though is Tapper. The world record on that is only about a 19-20 hour run. That's incredible...but certainly not as incredible as that 52 hours run on Nibbler by Tim IMHO.

[JoustGod]

After watching the technique in question, there is no doubt that this is pretty weak. It ranks right up there with pterry hunting in Joust. At least in Joust you have to play a fairly decent game to get to that point where the lava troll takes a firm enough hold on the final enemy. It appears that anyone with minimal game skill can get to this point on Saturn. Thus, rendering the game meaningless if this technique were to be allowed. Once you get to the setup point for the leech, there is absolutely nothing to pose a threat aside from your own endurance. Not exactly a score that I'd be crowing about given the lack of skill to achieve it.

tar, you seem to be a good enough player to not need this anyway. Please try to understand that this is not personal at all. All players here at MARP will go through this group review from time to time. Some decisions concerning this type of gameplay may even result in the banning of recorded and submitted games. Don't take offense as it has happened to almost all of us at one point or another.

I'm still awaiting some kind of solid argument from those who have voted to allow the leech. As has been discussed above, so many games in MAME will be in need of a case-by-case review. So, it is virtually impossible to make a blanket rule for all games. Just not going to happen. This particular case with Saturn is pretty glaring and makes it hard for me to understand the votes to allow the leech. Enlighten us, if you will...

[Weehawk]

It ranks right up there with pterry hunting in Joust

Ah memories.... It was just about 20 years ago I broke 10 million doing that.

Once you get to the setup point for the leech, there is absolutely nothing to pose a threat aside from your own endurance

As I pointed out earlier, it doesn't even require endurance. You can leave something pressing two keys on your keyboard and go to bed.

I'm still awaiting some kind of solid argument from those who have voted to allow the leech.

Perhaps they have recorded 100 million point inp's and are waiting to upload them in case of a favorable vote.

Or they might have been confused by your subject heading: "A definite NO". The question in the vote is "Should the leech be banned." A vote of NO would be to allow the leech. You weren't number six, were you?

John

[dskys]

I voted no, and in some ways i still stand by it... but very strong arguements have been put forward as to WHY techniques like this should be banned... Although the only real strong one imo is that inps like this are incredibly dull to watch.

Maybe it should be split so that one game will be versus the player (no leeching) and the other against good ol Mr. Gates (versus the stability of windows)?

ps.. if i wanted a HS NVRAM poll thingy is this the forum to put it in?

[LN2]

I don't see how anyone could vote for this leeching to be allowed. As pointed out above it requires very minimal skill to even setup then you can leave the game for hours/days/weeks on end and come back and claim your "high score"...oh boy. Congratulations....what "skill"...

if you allowed that you might as well archive the game as scores for it mean absolutely nothing with that technique being allowed....as other games have been archived cuz scores for it are meaningless to track.

...which is exactly why it should be banned. If this leech is banned then you can still track scores for this game.

If somehow this ban doesn't get approved I move for this game to be archived. From what I have seen it takes no vote to archive a game. There will no longer be any point to playing it.

Cases like this shouldn't even require a vote of a poll.
There are several other similar cases that were banned and even those you had to have some small level of skill at least to keep leeching. You couldn't leave it unattended with certain button(s) pressed down.

[Weehawk]

the other against good ol Mr. Gates (versus the stability of windows)?

LOL, good one.

But seriously, what would be the point in that? (This is the argument for banning the technique.)

Actually, I do share some of your feelings on the subject..I really do. When I get around to writing them out fully I'll make it the subject of a separate post.

John

[LordGaz]

Hi all :):):),

Most of y'all already know my views on this subject but what the heck, I'll post at the risk of boring the pants off ya once again .

Dskys, with your first post you just about hit the bullseye as far as I am concerned. When it becomes possible to play a certain game indefinitely with no skill either by setting it up in a certain way as in Saturn's case or simply by the ease of the gameplay then I believe the game should be said to be 'masterable' and we should leave it at that.

We shouldn't start running around like headless chickens trying to find restrictions and rules to enforce just because the score on a game doesn't correlate with the skill required to achieve it. Just let anyone who wants to leave their computer on for weeks on end with matchsticks holding the fire button down while they go on holiday do so. No one is forced to watch the inp produced, inps at MARP are for proving the final score, nothing more.

IMHO, games that have special rules that make it deviate from arcade conditions should be for the tricks page, games that are played in the traditional way where you can do whatever you want do not belong there. Arcade games do not have 'tricks' or 'bugs' to 'exploit' because they are released in a final state. The tricks page is for showing off rarities or unusual things, it's not for showing off things that are 'banned'.

I remember when I got my first small electronic Space Invaders game when I was young and ended up mastering it practically the first day I had it. This made me pretty depressed of course so I started trying to invent 'special rules' for it like letting them get the bottom row before firing for example. But it then becomes a different game and feels artificial and a bit pointless. In fact, this is what 'mastering' a game means ie. you have cracked it, you have found it's weak point and brought the game to it's knees and can score as high a score as you want.

Yes some games then become a matter of endurance but this is how it should be. Gauntlet is a case in point. Anyone can play Gauntlet indefinitely especially the intermediate releases, but most people get bored to tears after the first few levels so this is where the skill lies on this particular game ie. the endurance factor. In fact when I used to play this game at college I had a rival and we always tried to better each other's top score when the other was away. One day I had the idea of sticking a coin into his slot when he was approaching the top score and this divided his score down of course, what a bastard I was :twisted: hehe. Then again I also had 'friends' who thought it was funny to wiggle the joystick and press the fire button when you were trying to enter your name after a 6 hour marathon session .

Please do not take this all 'as a matter of fact', just conversation . Oh and AL, I seem to remember the top 3 pole vault attempts being routinely 5m94.

Cheers, Gaz.

[LN2]

Perhaps Gaz, but MARP is about being a library of inp files showing skill at playing games. Any inp using this leeching technique is not really showing any skill. Technically yes, it shows they "mastered" the game.

Any game so easily "mastered" should not have high scores tracked for it....so given your view let's just archive the game and not track scores anymore for this game....then you can have your precious 2000 hour inp file uploaded here for that game for anyone to watch.

The banning of this technique in this case is like many others where the scores actually mean something again and replay files are showing someone skilled playing the game.

People want to watch inps showing skill....not some lame leech "trick". They can get that off a leech/tricks page...not a scoreboard.

The scoreboard is for competition....and using this leeching technique makes it totally not about competition and skill of playing the game but just how long your computer can stay up and running...clearly someone with an extra computer they can dedicate to the task for weeks/months has an advantage for. It's pointless.

[BBH]

I voted no, and in some ways i still stand by it... but very strong arguements have been put forward as to WHY techniques like this should be banned... Although the only real strong one imo is that inps like this are incredibly dull to watch.

Did you actually watch the recording before voting?!?!?

The fact that this greatly lowers the amount of skill required to get a ridiculous score isn't a "strong argument" either?

Okay, since you don't want to talk about the game in question in this thread, here's a hypothetical situation for you...

Let's say there's a trick/glitch in Hyper Sports which makes the required height on Pole Vault 0.00m. And it never goes up, it stays at 0.00m. It would obviously require practically no skill to stay on the event forever and keep getting points here. Would you accept that? Would you think it's an acceptable way to play the game for competition? Do you think that would show who has the most skill at the game?

We shouldn't start running around like headless chickens trying to find restrictions and rules to enforce just because the score on a game doesn't correlate with the skill required to achieve it. Just let anyone who wants to leave their computer on for weeks on end with matchsticks holding the fire button down while they go on holiday do so. No one is forced to watch the inp produced, inps at MARP are for proving the final score, nothing more.

IMHO, games that have special rules that make it deviate from arcade conditions should be for the tricks page, games that are played in the traditional way where you can do whatever you want do not belong there. Arcade games do not have 'tricks' or 'bugs' to 'exploit' because they are released in a final state. The tricks page is for showing off rarities or unusual things, it's not for showing off things that are 'banned'.

What??? The whole reason this site was started was because it's a way to show how scores are achieved. Nobody is FORCED to watch a recording, sure, but the whole reason this site exists is to show these things. When the site started 5 years ago it was small and placed more emphasis on tips/tricks/glitches, it even had a Request section for people to ask for other players who were capable of pulling off tricks. They WANTED to see these tricks. Then the leaderboard came along and tricks sort of got lost in favor of high score competition.

Tar's Saturn (and Cosmic Chasm) recordings are a great way to show how infinite scores are possible. But as such, they are tricks that the designers didn't intend for high score play, so submitting those on regular MARP for high score competition just doesn't seem right. They belong in the tricks area, under the "Cheeky Chappies" section. Perhaps there may be someone who played Saturn in the arcade, heard there was a way to get infinite points, but didn't know how. That's what this recording should be for.

Why should we just give up and declare a game "mastered" through an infinite scoring trick that's interesting to watch for about 5 seconds?

Yes some games then become a matter of endurance but this is how it should be. Gauntlet is a case in point. Anyone can play Gauntlet indefinitely especially the intermediate releases, but most people get bored to tears after the first few levels so this is where the skill lies on this particular game ie. the endurance factor. In fact when I used to play this game at college I had a rival and we always tried to better each other's top score when the other was away. One day I had the idea of sticking a coin into his slot when he was approaching the top score and this divided his score down of course, what a bastard I was :twisted: hehe. Then again I also had 'friends' who thought it was funny to wiggle the joystick and press the fire button when you were trying to enter your name after a 6 hour marathon session .

Nice point, but Gauntlet at least requires more skill and time invested into it to be able to play it forever. And it's also more interesting to watch IMO, maybe because actual progress is being made in the game.

Keep in mind that when Twin Galaxies was tracking scores and holding tournaments in the 80's, they eventually tried to do away with marathons on games like Defender, Joust, and Robotron altogether. So they came up with the Tournament Settings and restricted games to 5 lives only. Because it's a better way of figuring out who the best player in the game is. Who has the most skill, not who has the most endurance. So they started enforcing these special rules and settings to bring down the game time and make things more interesting. I don't think they ever came up with tournament settings for Gauntlet, so I'm not sure what the best way to make things more challenging on that outside of raising the difficulty. (although I suppose there's always the versions of the game that give less food...)

anything else I was going to say here has already been said by Rick.

[QRS]

Well, what I was going to say has already been said by Rick and BBH <--Me

[LN2]

Although it does seem for the intermediate releases of Gauntlet that a few have mastered it where they can play virtually forever, it's not something someone just watching the inp can achieve themselves with almost no practice. I'm guessing most would require playing it quite a bit to learn the levels etc. before being able to do really well on gauntlet. I have tried that 5-10+ times and still can't get all that far in the game. Knowledge of the levels in some cases is very important. Hit a wrong trap and there goes 200-300 health! That often can be the difference between continuing on to that next level where you can build up your health again and your game being over.

There are many games that are "patterned" in that manner where once you know the levels you can "master" the game. However, it's not really all that trivial to master most. For games where it is trivial, those games are archived. I know of a couple that likely should be archived...but aren't...but that's only my opinion.

Your leeching technique is someone a player that has never played the game before can do in a couple tries in 5 minutes. Of course the level of skill to master various games varies. It varies in the eye of the beholder as well.

However, that's not what this is about. It's about not playing the game "honestly". Face it, you really aren't even playing the game beyond the first minute. Someone getting 1+million on one of those intermediate releases of Gauntlet has learned many of the levels to do well on them...and has knowledge of techniques etc. to minimize health loss going through levels to the point where they can reach those certain levels where you can build your health back up. They are still playing the game...going through the levels etc. To have an analogy for your leeching "trick" for Gauntlet would be babysitting at that first ghost respawning station and leeching off ghosts forever....if your health didn't count down versus time. You just sit there forever....firing at appearing ghosts...careful to not destroy the base...if you do..just go to the next one and repeat....big deal. However, you can't do that as your health ticks down with time. How quickly you get through many levels is actually the key to keeping your health up. Someone not as skilled might be able to get through the levels also...but perhaps 10% slower pace so instead of 250 health left at some point they are down to less than 100 and in trouble of their game ending.

Why can't you just admit that scores for this game using that leeching technique are meaningless? Someone else can set that up in a few minutes(even if they have never played the game before) and just let it go a little longer than you did and beat your score.

I pointed this out for Naughty Boy and it's clones a few months ago. I had never played the game before and after watching the inp showing a similar trick on stage 1 or 2 I tried it myself and stopped at 2 million.

Playing the game as intended I couldn't get more than 20k on the game. It would require me to play it a lot and get skilled at it to score evne something like 50-100k.

[dskys]

[quote=BBH]Did you actually watch the recording before voting?!?!? [/quote]

No, I didn't. And, as I said/tried to say, my basis for voting no is not particular to this game or any game and thus watching it or watching inp38DD isn't relevant to MY viewpoint on leeching. I still stand by it IN SOME RESPECTS, but accept that, on MARP, it's probably not the way to do things.

Hope that clears it up