MARP Rule Change -- Broken "non-working" Games

[***PL***]

The editors of MARP have passed the following rule change:

Effective immediately all games declared by MAME Development to be "non-working" will be placed in the archive area.

The games are denoted by an extra message during start up: "There are known problems with this game. Type OK to Continue." In the future, and as games are being fixed, they will be taken from the archives and returned to regulation MARP.

It is important to note that all existing recordings will not be lost and can be viewed by searching and placing a * before the MAME name. The only impact is that these scores will not count towards the LB standings. It only affects a small number of people who submitted INPs knowing these games were not properly emulated.

[Donut]

I think that message actually reads "THIS GAME DOES NOT WORK PROPERLY". Other games that have "known problems" like the game lacks sound, sound emulation isn't 100% accurate, colors are wrong, etc. shouldn't be part of the archive.

How quickly was this change made? I couldn't upload an inp for a mahjong game, "crystal2", then when I queried the table it showed the asterisk. Huh? It wasn't there before. I thought all mahjongs were being archived but Phillippe, ozz and I would be, well you know, <like this. Not only that, we lost our LB points on crystal2 and crystal.

[AL]

Does that rule apply to games where say , this message appears :

" Screen flipping in cocktail mode is not supported " ?


Just curious , as there are a lot of games with that , also what Donut was saying about the sound..etc ?
Seems a tad harsh ?

Games that are f****d , fine...example Rolling Thunder ( old version ?...one version , anyhow) . But games where he above 'problem' i.e ' Screen flipping ' shouldn't be archived ? IMO ,anyhow .

AL ( unemployed , and enjoying it....for now . )

[mahlemiut]

What about un-XORed CPS-2 games, in particular those with recently released XORs (megaman2 and mshvsfu) which work perfectly. If they don't have XORs then are aren't playable, period. No way is anyone going to upload for those except by mistake.

[DRN]

I'm pretty sure he doesn't mean games with 'screen flipping' problems, colours wrong, no sound etc. Thats applies to about half the games mame emulates!
I think he's just referring to games that are so screwed they just dont play in the way they were designed. There a few like that.

[The TJT]

Wow, you decided that, that's really cool.
It should be decided case-specificly. Many of the games which have message "There are known problems with this game. Type OK to Continue." work just fine, many times you wonder what really is the thing not working...

But why bother asking "regular" marpers, or making a vote, because editors just know it better. Editors can change rules whenever they want to, which is a rule made by editors. Editors can also make new rules if they feel like it. Most/all of the marp "rules" are simply decided by one/couple/few of "editors.
You seem to have some sort of different idea of democrary. Some marpers seem to be more marpers than other. American clique?

I hate common sense, just make rules for everything you can think of. (sarcasm).
But my opinion does not have much weight, because I'm not 2/3! of something, neither have I submitted an inp in last two days. Nor have I voted myself to be an editor.

Thank you and excuse me,

TJT

[mahlemiut]

I'm pretty sure he doesn't mean games with 'screen flipping' problems, colours wrong, no sound etc. Thats applies to about half the games mame emulates!
I think he's just referring to games that are so screwed they just dont play in the way they were designed. There a few like that.

He's starred Mega Man 2. That works perfectly. Not sure about mshvsfu.

[AL]

"There are known problems with this game. Type OK to Continue."

Thats what Pat said in his post . It just confused me a bit . Maybe that needs to be re-defined / re-phrased ?


Let the Editors deal with that.......

And Tommi , I think the editors were right on this one . If the game is f****d , well then fair enough . No need to put it to a vote /poll , as every MARP'er would agree to archive screwed-up games ?

However , as far as I can remember ( not that long , actually ) any serious issue concerning changes to MARP rules are always put out in the open , for discussion amongst the players ? Correct me if i'm wrong there .

The editors couldn't be that un-democratic...or could they ???
Hell , some of them are afraid to show themselves at the ' MARP Player Profiles ' . Secret Squirrel mode ?

I'd better shut-up now . I'm in a weird mood .


AL


p.s Tommi , get back to work !!!

[mahlemiut]

The "This game doesn't work properly" certainly doesn't always mean that the game in question is unplayable or completely screwed. Although I think Pat has looked at what the problems are first, as Clash Road hasn't been *ed yet (has incorrect colours). He just hasn't checked to see if the game is actually playable or not.

[QRS]

Well, I think it is a good idea to get rid of all those recordings that have no real place in Marp. Example (over a year ago) one of the king of dragon clones in where the character was invisible. That clone was removed for uploading on MARP. That is a good thing and I agree fully with "*" those games.

Another example is an Arkanoid clone in wich the bat moves automaticlly :=)

Get rid of those!

I do think that this should be a "case to case" thing to do actually.
There are games that that works ok and can be finished etc and most important, there might be high competition etc on that game. Why archive them?

We have a lot of people on this comunity, so let´s all search those games and eliminate those that don´t work at all, invisible characters or other extreme errors etc.

And don´t take me wrong here. I don´t care about the leaderboard points here, and that is actually beside the point. I just think that those games should be treated as ordinary games, as long as they works ok.

My two cents....

[QRS]

Ok, I have 3 examples here from games that that was archived for me.

the games are:

Sen Jin - Guardian Storm (Korea)

Fully playable . The game can be finished etc. No need to archive that one in my opinion.

Hunchback (DK conversion)

the game crashes after your first man. This one should be archived 100%.

Tokio / Scramble Formation

Works ok, fully playable. No need to be archived.

I just think that this really should be a case to case thing to decide.

I have a different example:

I have first on the game Superbike, and that one crashes after a while (I don´t know why)
That game should be archived in my opinion, at least more of a candidate that games that do not crash right?

Cheers.

QRS

[mahlemiut]

Ok, here's the games that affect me at least...

Mega Man 2: The Power Fighters (US 960708) [megaman2] : Perfectly playable on an unmodified MAME with the XORs released at CPS2Shock.

The Legend of Kage (bootleg set 1) [lkageb] : Perfectly playable, don't see what the problem is here.

Super Street Fighter II: The Tournament Battle [ssf2tb] : Again perfectly playable, only network support doesn't work here.

Shadow Dancer (bootleg) [shdancbl] : Really the only slightly iffy one here, has some graphics corruption. Much better in earlier MAME versions (System16/18 driver is being re-written from scratch, remember). Certainly playable in earlier MAME versions at least.

[QRS]

Ok...according to Pat the Editors has decided that this rule should take place. Why does it seem to me that Barry has not voted att all in this issue? :=)
At least it does not seem that he likes the decision.
cheers.

[sikraiken]

equites: Uh, what's wrong here? A Japanese player was even able to max out the counter.

onna34ro: I don't really see anything about this that is unplayable/doesn't work. Want to explain?

pc_miket: Only the score is broken, and we came up with a new scoring system for the time being (amount of boxers beaten). Eventually the game would be made into some sort of time score or something instead of the actual score counter (that resets at every new boxer), since I believe you get more points IF they don't always get KO or you go thru more than 2 rounds.

tetris plus 2: Again, what's wrong here?

[DRN]

Well here are the ones that effect me that have been *'d and I don't know why.

High voltage (hvoltage)
Splendor Blast (splndrbt)

Both games are perfectly playable and have NO faults at all. Screen flipping in cocktail mode is not supported in Splendor Blast. They both display a message saying they have protection that is not fully emulated. If someone can explain to me why this causes a problem with recording games legally for marp then that's no problem I'll except it, but at the moment I cannot understand why they have been disallowed.
I'm all for removing games that just dont play correctly and may sometimes give an advantage to the player because of faults but these (and others by the looks of things) have been removed when they are identical in every way to playing it in the arcade.