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First, happy New Year to every marper !

I think it's time, now, to come back to these old good tournaments we had in the past here at MARP, no ? With new main knockout coordinator Phil Lamat, we thought that the 2003 year could begin with the 6th tournament ( called by used Marpers "t6" ), followed by a knockout tournament ( "k3" ) and why not a "t7" at the end of the year ...

So, here are my propositions for this next 6th tournament ( new players can read archives and rules for more details )

A - PREPARATION of the TOURNAMENT ( exact dates to be precised later )

1 ) Anybody registered with MARP can pick up to 3 games among all the available games.
2 ) I selected 7 genres : fighter, maze, platform, racing, shooter, sports, platform, and other games ( pinball, breakout, puzzle, cards, ... ). I will randomly pick games out of the games voted for, in each one of the above categories.
3 ) debate period
4 ) Publication of the 8 final games to be played with DIP settings chosen.
5 ) Judge Recruiting period.
6 ) Preparation : publication of games with DIP settings, judges, preparation of the t6-prefix, ...
7 ) TOURNAMENT 6 !

B - SCORING

Still a place-ranking system, but with changes : if you're playing in the tournament, you 're not obliged to complete all the games in order to qualify for the tournament. For each game, best score gets 100 points, next to best gets 99 points, and so on, ..., until worst score that gets a number of points equal to 101-(the number of participants for that game). To be clear, take an example : if 10 people are playing, but 9 people only have submitted a score for game 1, then scores for game 1 would be : 100-99-98-97-96-95-94-93-92 (*) . This new system of scoring prevents large modifications of scoring on the last day when all players who didn't qualify because they didn't submit an input for all the games were removed from the leaderboard. Another advantage is the 100 points reference which encourages players to submit an input for all the games. And finally, a max of 100 points is clearer for anybody than a max of 34 or 21 as seen in previous tournaments.

(*) If more than 100 people play - why not, after all ? - then 100 is replaced by S defined here : Let n(i) be the number of players for the game number i, with 1<= i <=8 and N = max((n(i)), with 1<= i <= 8. Then the best score S possible for one game would be S = 100*(1+INT(N/100)).C -

QUESTIONS

What I want you to tell me here in this thread is :

1 - Length of the tournament ( to play 8 games ) : 4 weeks ? 6 weeks ? 8 weeks ? Use the poll attached here.

2 - Version used : m35tg3 ? or is there another available version now ? Tell me your opinion ...

3 - More generally, if you have suggestions or comments, feel free to give them here ...

Thanks for your attention,

2003 MARP Tournament Coordinator,
Lagavulin.

I sort of think that starting that scoring system from 100 points is somewhat high. Unless of course we do get an incredible turnout with more than 100 players, Knockout 2 certainly did have a lot of people in the qualifying round for Anteater. The "regular" MARP tourneys have always been smaller, starting the scoring from 50 points would make more sense... unless of course, like I said, there's a big turnout.

Version of MAME to use? I say stick with m35tg3. Yes, there are a lot of games in AlphaMAME that I would like to play, but since it's based on the 0.62 source it's slow as fuck. There are quite a few games I can't get legal speed on, and if one of those gets in, then I can't play it unless I get a new computer. m35tg3 is much faster and has been working fine for everyone. It may not have as many games, but there are still plenty of games supported by this version that have not been used in any tournaments. (and look at Deca, no matter how many games were supported it wouldn't matter because people want to play Galaga and Track and Field all the fucking time.)

BBH wrote:...look at Deca, no matter how many games were supported it wouldn't matter because people want to play Galaga and Track and Field all the fucking time

Atleast that will change next year, with Ron making it "no games allowed from any past Deca".

BTW, sounds good Lagavulin.

I find there are some games that are far faster in 0.62 than in 0.35. Combat, and Paperboy from memory, are two. I would much rather have a greater variety of games. Something like Raiden would be real nice to have in a tournament. Vulgus just plain sucks.

mahlemiut wrote:I find there are some games that are far faster in 0.62 than in 0.35. Combat, and Paperboy from memory, are two. I would much rather have a greater variety of games. Something like Raiden would be real nice to have in a tournament. Vulgus just plain sucks.

WOW, TWO WHOLE GAMES

Meanwhile, every Neo-Geo game has gotten slower and slower. Boy, I just love playing Shock Troopers at fskp 3 or 4 when I get 100% all the time on older versions! :\

I see BBH's problem, having a slow computer myself. When two games is choosen that needs a fast computer then its almost impossible to win anything when you can only play 6 out of the 8 games.

But I also understand that players with fast computers would like a bigger selection.

How about letting the players with the slowest computers give feedback if they have problems running a game at the required speed?

And it should also be in the interest of Lagavulin to drop nomination of extremely big games that needs a fast PC to avoid that new players drop out again.

I think, let's go with Alphamame, but let's be reasonable towards everyone.

At least with Shock Troopers, I don't see any reason why you couldn't use 0.35 to play it.

mahlemiut wrote:At least with Shock Troopers, I don't see any reason why you couldn't use 0.35 to play it.

Well yeah, no shit. But in a hypothetical world where Shock Troopers actually got into a tourney but I'm forced to use AlphaMAME on it, I have to play with frameskipping which I really hate doing... yeah I would still win that game, but it's annoying. Yes, 0.35 is more than fine for it...

anyway, I guess like Frankie said, when games are chosen we'll have to figure out which possible ones people voted for would be games that could end up causing problems for those with slow computers.

So, we don't get to vote on the list of games to be randomly selected like in previous tournaments?

[quote]So, we don't get to vote on the list of games to be randomly selected like in previous tournaments[/quote]

Yes , but random picks will be made in each category : Among all the games voted for, I will randomly pick ,say, 3 games ( or 4, 5 , ... ? ), in each category : 3 shooters, 3 platforms, 3 fighters, ... Then debate can begin about these choices, including "slow computers" problems.

About version now : I've been away from MARP for a few months ... So can someone explain me why this ALPHAMAME is not clearly replacing m35TG now ?

As Frankie said, I prefer Alphamame without discussion. And I 've also a slow computer (650 mHz). And you can also accept two version : alphamame and 35TG3, if the default settings for a game are the same in the 2 version.

For Deca, I just say because 35TG is the only version accepted, the game choice are very restricted. They're no scrolling game in the 10 games, only games before year 85. It's a tournament for those who like the very old game. And why gng isn't the 10° game ? It had the same number of vote than the choosen one...

Francois Daniel wrote: For Deca, I just say because 35TG is the only version accepted, the game choice are very restricted. They're no scrolling game in the 10 games, only games before year 85.

...what the fuck are you talking about??

The reason that gng did not make it into the deca *sob* was due to a tie with (10th spot shared) Dig dug. Ron did a random thingie on those two games and Dig dug won.

The reason that the games in the deca involves almost only pre 85 games are because people voted on those. It was an open this year and that needs no further explanation

Cheers

QRS

oh, I misread that...

but yeah, the only reason pre-85 games get into Deca is because people are stupid and vote on the same old "popular" games over and over. Hey look, Galaga again... YAWN. the MARP tournaments have always been more interesting since there have always tended to be games that very few people were familiar with. sometimes they might not make the best candidate for tourney play (cough cough Us Vs. Them cough), but it makes things a little more fresh than having to play Frogger again.

Hey! No bad words about Frogger! j/k

I get your point BBH, and I agree with it. Hopefully next years deca will be different as they are planning to have a total NO to all games from previous decas.

Cheers

QRS