to continue or not to continue?

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Vaz just emailed me asking "am I allowed to continue". Since Angry has written a list of 'rules' for submissions, I reckon it ought to contain something about whether continues are allowed, as well.

My feeling is that all games should be played without continuing. I checked through the board's history quickly, and didn't find much about continues, other than Mark Longridge saying that for TG settings no continues are allowed, and BBH saying "As for games with "Forced endings", I think that all recordings done for MARP should be ONE credit only. While some games take away your score when you continue, being allowed to use infinite credits on a game that keeps your score when you continue is sometimes just asking for trouble".

Since I try not to be too dictatorial with MARP, I thought I'd ask you, the people, the decide. So what do you think?

Another similar point is where you can in some games insert two credits at the beginning to buy more lives, like in 'reactor' or 'gorf'. In those cases it's not clear what to do - at the moment MARP has 2 categories for reactor, and 1 for gorf...

So let's make a decision. Then it can go into the rule book :o)

Chris.

-- Zwaxy (zwaxy@bigfoot.com), December 15, 1998

Answers

to continue or not to continue....? DOWN WITH CONTINUES!

play to win, then you wont need continues ^_^

WARNING - RANTING AHOY!

also...i have been watching some of you guys replays lately...just to see gameplay methods and some (no names mentioned here) of you have scores where they arent even playing the game... just wasting lives in one place for points...and getting a massive score for it...now, this is not my idea of what replays are about, this is more of just POINTS LEECHING...if you cant play a game...then dont! its bullshit

sure you can get a score thats fairly unbeatable, but anyone can do that and it takes ZERO skill...it also makes it pointless to play the game properly to get a score if you can just do that (in some cases HAVE to) to get the score...

any comments ? id like to hear what others have to say on this!

Krool >(

-- Krool (kellyq@ihug.co.nz), December 15, 1998.


Points Leeching

first of all, I still stand by what I said earlier... all MARP recordings should be done without using any continues. All games should be one credit only (with the rare, obvious exception of games like Total Carnage which take two credits to start on factory settings) without any continues, whether or not your score is kept. Some games give you a huge bonus for finishing the game (such as Ghost Pilots and its 1942-esque 10 million bonus), and this isn't entirely fair if you continue til the end on these either...

Anyway Krool, by points leeching, I'd ask for you to list some examples but I think I know what you mean :) At one point I debated doing a Time Pilot recording since it's easy to just keep playing forever on a level, building up extra lives by collecting parachutes and doing nothing else... but hey, I agree with Krool. If you can't PLAY the game, why bother?

Then again, for those Black Tiger recordings I used every spare life killing those skeletons until time ran out, but that doesn't really count ;)

-BBH

-- BBH (lordbbh@aol.com), December 15, 1998.


I agree with BBH..

I'm all for using up any additional men you may have for extra points like in Black Tiger. Another excellent example is again Arkanoid. When I get to the boss on level 33, I usually have about 920K-940k. Then what I do is use up all my men I earned throughout the game by hitting the boss 15 times and then dying, collecting another 15K for each man I have in memory. On my last man, I hit the boss now 16 times which will complete the game and usually ending up with a score over 1.2M

-- Stephen Krogman (skrogman@concentric.net), December 16, 1998.

no scabbing!

yeah, well, i agree there.

maybe i need to point out an example ? naw... ^_^

but the thing is...these people just sit at a point in the game and just lose all lives ina points trap...i COULD do it on commando also...but i believe thats bad...so i wont :) (anyone wanna see commando score clock over ?) its bullshit, its not playing...

hmmm, im getting a tad worked up :) never mind...

-- Krool (kellyq@ihug.co.nz), December 16, 1998.


Response to settings...

I agree on leaving out the continues, but allowing them on games that take your score away if your game is ended. I feel if a player thinks they may be able to get a higher score from continuing from the same place with a score of "0" then all the power to him! On a game like arkanoid, I have seen a player get 400K before he ended his game and then when he continued to finish the game he ended up with a score of 500K from continuing with a begining score of "0". This allowed the player to slightly increase his score the second time playing then when he started his first game from the begining. For me, continues are useless because I can beat the game everytime I play and average 1.2M every game...

Just my 2 cents! :)

Regards,

SMK

-- Stephen Krogman (skrogman@concentric.net), December 16, 1998.



anti-continue vote

Just to reiterate my sentiments from a post in a long forgotten thread, I am against continues in MARP.

There is only 1 game that I would ever consider that continues are acceptable for (720 degrees), which offers both a FORCED ENDING and a limited number of continues (2 or 3), which creates a strategic element to the continue function.

-- Angry (greggg@ix.netcom.com), December 16, 1998.


hmmm

well, silkworm only lets you continue up to a certain stage (i cant remember) and then you cant continue...so is it okay to continue on this game then ? NO!

well...i still reckon if you need to continue , you need to play more to get practice!

-- Krool (kellyq@ihug.co.nz), December 16, 1998.


but wait there's more...

accidentally sent that last message...

The other issue of 3 lives / 7 lives options could be addressed in one of 2 ways. Either adding a custom entry for either 3 life play or 7 life play - or settling for 3 life mode only.

I could care less either way, however the custom entry method will allow for more playable games/more leaderboard points.

-- Angry (greggg@ix.netcom.com), December 16, 1998.


Dere can be only 1

It justs prolongs the competition and removes the skill from a game to be able to continue until the end. We need a foundation from which we can all compare our scores with. 1 credit demands greater skill (greater 'show off' value). 1 credit keeps the replay length down. 1 credit makes for easier verification (marp and TG). 1 credit is easier to understand and hard to dispute. Just click on over to the Omegrace cell and you'll see how I feel;\

Randood

-- Randood (randyb@netboise.com), December 17, 1998.


i think you should be able to comtinue once on the fighting games like street fighter and samurai show down however those games dont reset your score

on games that give you more lives for 2 credits wizared of wor comes into mind

there should be 2 catageroies hard with just 3 or how many lives you get for 1 credit and easy for 2 credits and more lives

got to go bet the top score on centipede

sayonara

-- richard kev stewaer (rayden239@aol.com), April 01, 1999.



Well, just got back last night with hanging out with Walter Day in New Port Richey (St. Petersburg) Fl. There was a Twin Galaxies Tampa Bay high score tourney going on there so me and my friend went over there for 2 days. Got some new scores on pinball to add to the book. As well as all this disscussion about allowing continutes on games that allow continues, well, I'm going to talk to Walter Day today about this matter and get an answer straight from him. As you all know, this only pertains to TG. TG doesn't make the rules for the MARP page, only for the world record book. So if something is decided that is a surprise to some, then that's what it'll be. I know for sure, there are some games that will allow continues, depending on the game. When there are others in the book that shouldn't. I'm working closley with Walter to change some of the settings on games with the help of Mark Longridge. 1 good point too, is that alot of games will have 2 catagories in the next book. Tournement and Default/Marathon. I also thought about just a few selected games that would have a list for games that used continutes untill you reached an inevitable ending. UNLESS, when you died it allowed you to repeat the same stage over after you cont. or a game like Tetris where you can cont. and just play forever. Alot still needs to be looked into this, and I'm on it with Walter. I'll keep everyone posted.

Steve Krogman

-- stephen krogman (skrogman@concentric.net), April 04, 1999.


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