What's this "Irritating Maze"(irrmaze)-game? I looked all my rom- bookmarks and didn't find it anywhere. Didn't find it from gamelist.txt(m36b1) or whatsnew.txt either. There's been couple of uploads and picture looks cool, a bit marble like. So what's the story? Tommi ps. Alex can you detect T&F "rlh"-cheat, when breaking inp-file?

-- Tommi Tiihonen (tiihoto@hotmail.com), August 04, 1999

Answers

You don't find it in the gamelist since it's a NeoGeo game, and they're not listed there. I've never played it, but I know you need a specific Bios Version.

-- Cicca (cicca@writeme.com), August 04, 1999.

Actually, either Cicca's right, or you should notice that it's THE Irritating Maze, not just Irritating Maze. Check under T instead of I and you might have it. Just a guess.

-- Q.T.Quazar (qan@home.com), August 04, 1999.

Tommi, I didn`t even know about the " rlh " cheat until I read it here. Don`t know how to even use it. Like I said, the ability to breakdown INP files was made known to me by Ron Corcoran at Snipercade. I`d suggest you e-mail him to answer your query. As for " Irritating Maze ", could this be an example of a Neo-Geo game worth playing ? (!)...ahem. ALEX

-- Alex Weir (alexweir@indigo.ie), August 04, 1999.

beggingbeggingwheretofindgivemeromromanycd-----Yes it's Neo Geo, but allmost impossible? to find anywhere. It must be pretty new one. I'd appreciate if someone could give here or mail me an URL where to find it. About "rlh": type "mame trackfld -cheat" in command line and it's activated. Use it keeping left shift pressed, or change the key from keyboard menu.----ps. I thought neos suck, but let's see

-- Tommi (tiihoto@hotmail.com), August 05, 1999.

I just wrote a little program to analyse all the 'trackfld' recordings on MARP. It's not at all unlikely that my program is wrong, and that I'm accusing innocent people of using the 'run like hell' cheat, but the program's findings are as follows:

phl_trackfld_95840_mame33       ok
rex_trackfld_94490_m35b13       rlh
god_trackfld_92850_m34b4        ok
tjt_trackfld_92300_mame34       ok
mv_trackfld_91190_m35rc1        ok
di_trackfld_91000_m34rc1        not sure...
max_trackfld_89790_m34b3        rlh
smk_trackfld_89740_win34        rlh
db_trackfld_88840_m35b13        rlh
kra_trackfld_88180_mame33       ok
jg_trackfld_87020_m34b3         rlh
aqua_trackfld_84310_mame35      rlh
djk_trackfld_79100_xmame35rc1-1 ok
ld_trackfld_66140_m35b13        ok

So there!

(And no, the program isn't freely available, unless this means anything to you:

$ for i in db_trackfld_88840_m35b13 ld_trackfld_66140_m35b13 rex_trackfld_94490_m35b13 mv_trackfld_91190_m35rc1 djk_trackfld_79100_xmame35rc1-1 aqua_trackfld_84310_mame35; do echo $i; unzip -p inp/$i.zip '*.[iI][nN][pP]' | od -x -v | tail +2 | grep '^[^ ]*[04]0 ' | cut -d' ' -f2- | cut -c6 | sort -u; echo; done

$ for i in kra_trackfld_88180_mame33 phl_trackfld_95840_mame33 jg_trackfld_87020_m34b3 max_trackfld_89790_m34b3 god_trackfld_92850_m34b4 di_trackfld_91000_m34rc1 tjt_trackfld_92300_mame34 smk_trackfld_89740_win34; do echo $i; unzip -p inp/$i '*.[iI][nN][pP]' | od -x -v | grep ' ' | cut -d' ' -f2- | cut -c1 | sort -u; echo; done

)

Chris.

-- Zwaxy (zwaxy@bigfoot.com), August 05, 1999.

Since it seems people want the game, I will have it on the tourney ROM page shortly.

-- Chris Parsley (cparsley1@hotmail.com), August 05, 1999.

Gee Zwaxy, I don't exactly feel that the word "accusing" is needed for the RLH cheat...uhh, method. As I've stated in a different post, the MAME team has included this as part of mame.exe and is every bit as valid as the PacMan speed cheats. So no need to treat this one as a crime. :p

JoustGod

-- JoustGod (pinballwiz1@msn.com), August 05, 1999.

[Trying a new mail address in an attempt not to jump to the top of the list!]

I'm not sure about the 'RLH' cheat - it's a cheat, like any other, right? To say it's OK 'cos the MAME team provides it doesn't help, 'cos they provide a pretty large cheat.dat file with all kinds of infinite life cheats in it. Just because MAME's -record feature will record the RLH cheat, but won't record the infinite life cheats, does that make it better?

Maybe the issue is that the original arcade game provided the cheat - that's different, I guess, and means that track'n'field should be split into 2 games, like I did for pacman/pacman-fast, right?

-- Zwaxy (zwaxy@mail.com), August 05, 1999.

Uhhh, I can't find that cheat.dat file that you referred to, Mr. Zwaxy. And I think that's because it is an "outside" file. Here's the way I view that situation...(and this is repeating myself in part)the MAME team, whether for good or bad, produces this free program that I can equate to being its own arcade machine/ game in an arcade. Well, this particular arcade (we'll call it the MAME arcade...clever, huh?) has a machine that provides an RLH feature for T&F and Hypersports. Any other cheats for this game that you are referring to will have to be brought in from the outside to be used, i.e., Pugsy's cheat file. It's kind of the equivalent to bringing in some kind of mechanical device that someone has concocted in their garage to play the machine in the arcade.

If you'd like to seperate the categories, well heck that gives me more points...I think.:p But I don't see that as necessary as this whole T&F thing is quite a mess at this point anyway until we can come up with definitive ways of detecting unfair gameplay.

well, anyway...JoustGod

-- JoustGod (pinballwiz1@msn.com), August 05, 1999.

Try Joustgod http://cheat.retrogames.com/

-- Tommi (tiihoto@hotmail.com), August 06, 1999.

Nope, nope, nope...Tommi, I'm well aware of Pugsy's cheat file as well as the other major contributors for the -cheat option. My point is (once again) that the RLH is included in the MAME executable and not an add-on option like the cheat dat files are.

Anyway, I'm not going to fight this one as there are other players that are much better than I am at this game and I stand to gain nothing arguing this point any further. Besides, I feel like I'm the only one here that gets the point I'm trying to put across concerning this game. It is very similar to us accepting the MAME team's default settings for games as far as I'm concerned. We don't seem to have a problem with that one (well, with one recent exception)...or am I just imagining all of this? If we do decide that there is a problem with MAME defaults, then let's go the Twin Galaxies route and be done with it.

Have a nice day,:p JoustGod

-- JoustGod (pinballwiz1@msn.com), August 06, 1999.

JG - cheat.doc was distributed with the MAME binary until recently, and included the pacman infinite lives cheat:

$ unzip -p /var/www1/retrogames/mame/zips/mame033b.zip cheat.dat | grep '^pacman:' | grep Visual
pacman:0:4e15:4:0:Infinite Lives (Visual)

So that's fair game, since it's in our MAME arcade?

Yours awkwardly,

Chris.

-- Zwaxy (zwaxy@mail.com), August 06, 1999.