I did not partcipate in the current tourney for several reasons. One being not being able to record and playback my own recordings, on some games. Hopefully its just a -autoframeskip problem, I'm still wondering why my frontline recording doesnt work in win32 but works in Xmame.... Anyhoo.

My take on tournament settings should be set to the absolute hardest, no extra lives, faster than crud, what not.

Also: Longevity games should be kept to a minimum. Galaga being one of the lengevity games. A game that takes more than an hour to play should not be in the tournament.

Pattern games should be left out alltogether, Pacman, Digdug, what not. Or left to the barest minimuns. I do not think there where any in this tourney, just thinking of future tourneys.

Keep in mind, some people may not have super fast machines. A minimum spec may have to be set for tournament play if some games are chosen. I think the current set of games did not have this possible problem, just thinking of future tourneys.

-- Dave Kaupp (info@kaupp.cx), September 04, 1999

Answers

I guess I can still go for Twin Galaxies settings for the next tournament - but I agree with Dave - if they're proven to lead to a marathon game... then I might come out and tweak them to lessen the average time played...

BTW... this is obviously not my final decision - there are many rules in the MARP Tourney that are basically set by the players, and this is one of them.

-- Gameboy9 (goldengameboy@yahoo.com), September 04, 1999.

Pattern games: Impossible to keep out of tourneys. Too damn many.

Galaga, Gyruss, Pang 3, Mr. Do's Wild Ride (to an extent), Combat School (to an extent), and at least one other game - I'm not telling yet :P qualify. I'm willing to write more to back up the first 5 if someone really is terribly blind today.

Hard as Hell settings - ABSOLUTELY! I can't believe someone actually said it before I did. Unless it's impractical to change the settings (Bally MCR games) or the game is pointless at hardest (any examples?) there's no reason not to crank it to 11!

Some games are more compatible across platforms if you turn the sound off. I don't know if you tried that.

Aqua

-- Aquatarkus (aquatarkus@digicron.com), September 04, 1999.

This reply is to Aqua, mainly.

How could you define a "pattern game" games like Galaga and Gyruss !?!? OK....you surely need to know patters to play at best, to get the most score possible, but they ar *shooters*. If you know the pattern, it's not enough....

A pattern game is Do Wild Ride, or Pacman, or Nibbler.

You can tell me that every game has always the same pattern (try playing Juno First, or even most "driving" games), but you can't name all "pattern Games".

This post not to flame you, but just to clarify some terms.

Ciao Cicca

-- Cicca (cicca@writeme.com), September 06, 1999.

I orginally brought up 'pattern' games. To me a pattern game is a game that could be moving the joystick in the same sequence each time and produce the same score or complete a level.

Pacman is the bigest example of a pattern game (imop), while MS Pacman is an off-shoot of pacman and it does involve using smaller patterns in some cases, it is not a full pattern game. There is a bit of randomness to Ms Pacman.

All video games have a bit of patterness to them. Since they are computers and computers are not truly random( what is truly random if you could control every molecule around you) they are somewhat predictable.

I just think it would be more benificial for the average game player to not have top develop the patterns required to master a pattern type game like Pacman and the like.

I would be disappointed if Pacman or Digdug where voted in the next tourny as I have not devleoped the patterns capable to gain a ultrahigh score in those games.

Thats just me of course and thats why there is voting. :)

-- Dave Kaupp (info@kaupp.cx), September 06, 1999.

Ok, I'll detail what I meant. I didn't really feel like spending much time on it earlier and I was more flippant than I should have been.

Galaga and Gyruss are fixed pattern games because if you do the same sequence of actions at the same time in a stage you get the same results. The easiest way to see what I mean is to let all the bugs fly into formation on Galaga. The bugs fly into formation the same way every "Wave X". The bugs will break formation and attack you in the same timing and order every "Wave X" each time you do this. The longer a sequence of actions can be kept up the longer the game stays absolutely predictable.

Please note that although I see this in Galaga I'm basically incapable of taking advantage of it. I don't like playing "shooters" or marathon games, and it kills whatever motivation there might be to practice.

Except for shooting galleries I & III, and possibly the instructor, Combat School is like this. It's obvious from the first contest.

Mr. Do's Wild Ride does not do this. The car timing and sequence varies from game to game on each invididual stage. On the first three stages there is enough slack that the same pattern can be used regardless of these variations. This is not true of stage 4 and beyond, but it doesn't become obvious until stage 9 I think.

Since the ability to use a fixed pattern to gain success seemed to be the issue with Pac-Man, Dig-Dug, etc. I pointed out the impossibility of eliminating games where someone can do that.

Aqua

-- Aquatarkus (aquatarkus@digicron.com), September 06, 1999.