Tourney 2 - Rules Voting

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I'm also going to make THIS the golden thread to argue the rules. Everyone has the chance to argue the rules, here are some key rules that NEED to be debated. Deadline is October 28th, 2359 GMT

A. And most importantly... what DIP Settings will we use? A lot of people are saying hardest settings, but I think TG settings except "marathon games"(then hardest settings) would do quite well. What do you think of this latest idea?

B. What version of mame should we use? Should we just go with the straight latest version of mame, or should we have the appropriate games go to MAME 35 FINAL and the latest games to the latest beta? I'm neutral here... so you decide! :)

C. Do you want to keep the scoring system? I still say yes... due to the fact that it can get very close no matter what you do.

D. Any other rules you wish to argue? Please do!

The rules page has been updated today - please look it over, then make your opinion - I'm all ears! :)

Thanks for reading - C ya! :)

-- Gameboy9 (goldengameboy@yahoo.com), September 22, 1999

Answers

A. TG settings if they are already availible, hardest otherwise.

What I'm suggesting is that if there aren't settings already listed on Mark Longridge's site or on twingalaxies.com for a game that makes the final cut, that we use the hardest difficulty settings and suggest they be made the TG Emulated settings for the game.

B. Must playback in MAME .35 final or .36 final, unless it will only play back in a version previous to .35 final. This allows Carnival and some others with problems, but keeps the tournament choices out of the beta rush.

C. Yes.

Aqua

-- Aquatarkus (aquatarkus@digicron.com), September 23, 1999.


I thought of another big issue we should talk about(sorry Aqua :( )

D. Is the minimum games requirement too tight or should it be loosened to say 6 games to qualify / 7 or 8 games to keep voting? I'm neutral... but I will go no lower than 6 games to qualify / 7 games to keep voting... probably :)

-- Gameboy9 (goldengameboy@yahoo.com), September 23, 1999.


I think it states in the voting rules that if two clones compete with each other the one with the highest points wins out. This is good, but it doesn't state that cloned games should combine points and if the combined score gets into the tourney, then the highest voted clone will be the game entered into the tourney. i.e. ghosts+goblins was voted with 6 pts by david oliver, and ghouls+ghosts was voted 9 by me. They are clones so does the vote for the clone set get 15 points and if that is high enough to be in the tourney then the ghouls+ghosts would be entered as the game?

I think combining clone games in the score is fair only because we don't allow one person to vote for more than one clone of a game.

(the only reason i voted for ghouls instead of gng was because i didn't think there was a way to points leech, but if gng wins obviously there would be some need for points leech judging.) If combining clone scores isn't going to happen then i'd vote for gng instead.

-- Chad (churritz@cts.com), September 25, 1999.


One of the rules says:

"There will be no excessive points leeching in any game. It is to the judge's discretion to determine wheater [sic] a game is points leeching or not. However, the Judge Coordinator will have the right to overrule the judge."

Can you be a little more specific than just the word "excessive"? For instance, I used to like the game Kangaroo, until I saw how the 200k scores on MARP were reached. The first one only made it to round 3, the second to round 4. I have played regular (no point leeching) games myself reaching round 4 and had only 60k or so. So... where do you draw the line? Based on my Kangaroo example, would 70k (10k leeched) be permitted? Maybe you can express it in a percentage of the total score?

Ben Jos.

-- Ben Jos Walbeehm (walbeehm@walbeehm.com), September 25, 1999.


I like Chad's "combine clones" idea. But if clones are not combined in the voting, then perhaps the people who see that the clone they voted for is going to lose to another clone, could change their vote by replacing the clone they originally voted for by the more popular one (hint, hint)...

Ben Jos.

-- Ben Jos Walbeehm (walbeehm@walbeehm.com), September 25, 1999.



I'll talk about the combining clones idea first. I think that's a good idea - shoulda put it down. I.E. if somebody mentions a clone, or a unique game that's actually a clone(i.e. Crazy Kong = Donkey Kong, and Super Sprint = Championship Sprint), then we'll combine those votes, infusing them into the main game. Now you can't vote a game as a 10 pointer, then it's clone as a 9 pointer, then another clone, 8 points.(we haven't had that problem yet)

The rule states that if a game is SIMILAR IN GAMEPLAY then the one with more points passes... this leads to my bad news: Ghouls N' Ghosts is NOT a clone of Ghosts N' Goblins. Ghouls was made in '88, Ghosts made in '85. The gameplay is different enough to disqualify it from clone status. Then again... I guess the players can make an exception to this ruling if they want... and make ghouls a "clone" of ghosts... though I bet people will come up and mention the same thing for regulation competition... I don't know. Do you want to make it a "clone" chad(you'd have to get more players to back you up though), or change your vote to Ghosts N' Goblins?

Heck... maybe the whole rule should be changed and say those that are very similar in gameplay should be combined... but then again... hangon and outrun would be combined... they are both "checkpoint" racing games... it would be really subjective for us to determine.

As for the points leeching thing... I really couldn't determine how much points leaching could be over the line at the time I made that rule. I guess if you start leeching for more than 60 seconds or two lives or something that's a violation. I'm not too sure of a concreate number... this is why I said it was the judge's discretion... anyone want to contribute to this conversation?

Thanks for reading :)

-- Gameboy9 (goldengameboy@yahoo.com), September 25, 1999.


I've made an opinion on the version rule - I think we should use the latest beta period. Why? Nowadays, recordings now have frame-by- frame playbacks... pause the game, then hit Shift+P to proceed by one frame. This would be very important to see if autofire was used especially if they are separated by three frames or less.(or .05 seconds if it was 60 fps)

-- Gameboy9 (goldengameboy@yahoo.com), September 25, 1999.

Re: Point leeching

OK, if you say that leeching for more than 60 seconds or 2 lives or more is a violation, then I don't think it's entirely fair. My example probably is more or less an exceptional situation (i.e. this situation would not occur very often at all in point leeching), but it can still happen:

In my Donkey Kong (US) MARP submission, I reached L=21 on my first life. I knew that there was a forced ending to the game at L=22, and I also knew that if I would just go to L=22 and lose all four of my lives there, I would not earn many points. So on various levels at L=21, I lost a life on purpose after leeching some points. The total of the extra points I got this way was less than 20000 points.

Or another example: Getting the perfect score on Pacman also violates both the 60 seconds rule and 2 lives rule...

The points I am trying to make here: - If somebody were to get in a similar situation while recording for the tournament, should he just basically stop playing even though he had several lives left? - Yes, I leeched using more than 2 lives and for more than 60 seconds, but the total number of points I got this way was only around TWO PERCENT of my total, final, score. - If TG settings are used, and TG doesn't disallow leeching, and people want to have a chance of having their tournament submissions be considered for the next edition of the TG book, then... (fill in the blank).

I guess the best of both worlds is my following proposition: Basically, the 60 seconds / 2 lives (or however it gets finalised) rule applies, with the exception that, for games that come to a real (which does not include finishing a "round", however long that round is; I am talking about a real "Game Over" situation) or forced ending, point leeching is allowed, but ONLY once the player is "sufficiently close" (however you wish to define that) to that ending, and ONLY if the player then continues to actually FINISH that game. So this would not apply for games that do not come to some kind of ending (for those, the 60 seconds / 2 lives rule would always apply).

Ben Jos.

-- Ben Jos Walbeehm (walbeehm@walbeehm.com), September 25, 1999.


I'll agree with that Ben Jos - I think the point is you need to try to make progress in the game instead of walk around the same place all the time. Some do struggle and will pull back in a couple games to get rid of the trouble, I bet we can detect that. I'll say leaching next to the end of the game will be permitted. I have another example for you - Renzo Vignola scored some 2 million in super pang, leaching a good bit for waiting 30 seconds to score the 100,000 points and all that - I don't see a problem with that... I consider that a bonus for finishing. Of course, this isn't a final ruling...

-- Gameboy9 (goldengameboy@yahoo.com), September 26, 1999.

The rules do state that the leeching should be upto the judges discretion, which will be unique for each game, thus letting you do the minor leeching in donkey kong and the difficult leeching in pang. I think the leeching that everyone doesn't want to see is clearly leeching that doesn't move the game to a new screen/level. With gng points leeching could be tolerated as long as you don't leech in the same place with different lives. (if you can points leech and be out in the next level before the timer ends, i think that's reasonable.)

ghouls and gng are different games and are not mame clones, however i think they share enough similarities in graphics, opponents, and gameplay to be considered similar. I would prefer ghouls because it looks cleaner and there are more levels in it to play. Maybe david who voted for gng, doesnt even know theres a nicer version to play out there, so i'll have to email him. But if he still likes gng, i want to submit that ghouls + gng are similiar enough to be combined.

-- Chad (churritz@cts.com), September 26, 1999.



You know something? I think the "punishment" for not playing the games when voting is way too harsh... what if they don't like the games that are selected? Most will usually get at least half the games that they don't like... so I think it should now be that if you don't play the nine games, you can't vote for one tournament - if you don't play five games, you can't vote for two tournaments... that's it. Anybody have thoughts on this idea?

-- Gameboy9 (goldengameboy@yahoo.com), September 27, 1999.

I really don't care what you do with the voting status of someone who doesn't play all the games, but I do have this to say about those players...if they don't play ALL the games, then disqualify them from the tourney, points, standings, everything. I understand that some people might not enjoy all of the games in a particular tournament. If you don't think you'll get into a set of games that are for a specific tourney, then DON'T BOTHER PLAYING! That is what regular MARP is for...pick and choose what YOU want to play, problem solved. I bring this up because we do have a few potential situations in the current tourney that adversley affect either me or my opponents point- wise. It makes no sense, whatsoever, to submit only a limited number of scores for this kind of situation. Like I said before, that is what MARP is for.

In conclusion, I'm for an "all or nothing" approach to this problem. Either play 'em all or you don't get to participate with the other boys and girls...hmmm, are there any girls in this thing? ;)

JoustGod

-- JoustGod (pinballwiz1@msn.com), September 27, 1999.


I really don't see what the big deal is in having to play all games. If there are a few games you really don't like, and you're still required to submit scores on every game, it would only take a few minutes at most to still "play" the game, but die almost instantly. In addition, this would guarantee you at least 1 point for that game, while not playing it at all would not get you any points.

Anyway, I think the least someone could do is to give a game at least one serious try. That wouldn't take up that much more time probably. Like JoustGod said, why sign up for the tournament if you only want to play certain games? When I signed up, I was well aware that I am lucky if just one or two of the games from my top 10 will be in the tournament. Anybody who really thinks they'll get most of their top 10 in the tournament probably shouldn't sign up, because they'll be in for a big disappointment.

-- Ben Jos Walbeehm (walbeehm@walbeehm.com), September 27, 1999.


I think anyone who signed up to play in the tourney should do just that--play everything! It is total B.S. when a non-tourney player comes in and plays one or two games and no others so they can brag for top spot. In my book that doesn't mean doo doo. You have to play ALL the games period. So I'm with JoustGod and Ben Jos on this one...

It's gotta be 10/10, whether people voted or not doesn't matter. Afterall, the goal here is participation isn't it???

Unlike regular MARP, lame scores in the tourney should be welcome!

-- Pat (laffaye@ibm.net), September 27, 1999.


Alright... I think I got it... so far it's a 4 - 1 vote to my knowledge(that includes my vote) - so I think I'm going with 10 games to qualify. I think I'll do voting like this: your votes will be cut in half if you fail to play ten games(you only get 5 votes, most getting 5 points instead of 10)Heck... just get one point... it doesn't matter... at least show that you want to play them all - a tournament consists of TEN games, not one.

-- Gameboy9 (goldengameboy@yahoo.com), September 27, 1999.


I'll agree that most of not all games should be played to enter the tournament. As previously stated its a ten game tournie not one.

On a side note. It looks like I'm going to have a controller problem with centipede. I tried playing it last night at home and there is not enough room on my mouse pad to get good control, I end up pausing every 3 seconds to get my mouse back near the center of the pad. I tried it at work (win32 version as I have NT)where I have a much bigger desk, when I move quickly to the left, it moves to the right instead, wierd. It looks like I may have better control with the keyboard.

-- Dave Kaupp (info@kaupp.cx), September 27, 1999.


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