WCC week 10 : MARVINS

Week Challenge Championship board

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LN2
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Post by LN2 »

Dax wrote:What eats the shit outta me is these "one and only" last minute submissions that crush my score after ive been leading and improving all week long. Its just in bad taste.
There is an assumption in concluding that.

I can't play in these cuz I play using macmame, but for almost all of my inps I have uploaded to MARP I didn't upload each and every single new best score I got when playing the game.

I played it and when I felt I was done with it(for months) or had the top score I would then upload the inp.

I then wouldn't upload another inp for it...even if a better score until someone else had topped my previous score.

I have at least 50 replay files on my HD from the past year like this that would all earn decent MARP points(at least 50 points for each replay file) but I haven't submitted any of those because I felt they were efforts where I could do better...then just never got back to playing the game.

I have a handful that are better than ones I currently have posted at MARP also but I have not submitted them...cuz I know if I play the game even another night or 2 I can beat that score too.

If I was playing in these, I might be where I would give a shout to threads like this announcing my current best score for the game...but I wouldn't bother uploading any replay file until I was DONE playing it for the event.

I think it's even more important knowing all replay files are saved at MARP...so even when you upload a new one your older ones for that same rom set are still on the MARP site....what a huge waste of storage space to have that as the default. By default older replays and scores should be totally deleted if a new one is uploaded...then perhaps a checkbox on the submission form where checking it has the site preserve your previous replay file...so in those cases where someone wants to refer to that one also they can.

I'd bet 15+% of the storage space for all the replay files are ones that really could be deleted.

I wonder for some games if someone might have 20+ replay files uploaded for the 1 rom set cuz they upload each new personal high they get....what a waste. I think most would only want to watch the best one they have....not the previous 19+ that were lower and less skilled. The only time that would be cool would be to see some cool trick or event that happened in that other game but not the 1 you have your best score for.
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Post by mahlemiut »

Do you like playing sport blindfolded? That's what this is like.

I really don't see the point in even trying to compete if you can't get a good idea of how the opposition is doing.
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Mr. Kelly R. Flewin
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Post by Mr. Kelly R. Flewin »

LN2 wrote:I think it's even more important knowing all replay files are saved at MARP...so even when you upload a new one your older ones for that same rom set are still on the MARP site....what a huge waste of storage space to have that as the default. By default older replays and scores should be totally deleted if a new one is uploaded...then perhaps a checkbox on the submission form where checking it has the site preserve your previous replay file...so in those cases where someone wants to refer to that one also they can.

I'd bet 15+% of the storage space for all the replay files are ones that really could be deleted.
Rick,
Now while you do prove a point, quite admirably, may I also point out, that by keeping some of these older replay files, it works to the advantage of some people. What I am getting at is...

Ex. Johnny Bomber uploads a wicked recording for.. hmm for sake of
argument, Cameltry. Now, it's cool, he score some serious points and
gets some fine recognition. All is fine an dandy.

NOW! Fast forward 3 months later. Feeling lucky one night, he gives
Cameltry another whirl and then COMPLETELY DECIMATES the game
and most importantly, makes his last submission look like a
preschooler played it. BUT! After uploading it, one of the confirmers
takes a run through and... HEY! WAIT A MINUTE! THIS USED NVRAM!

Johnny didn't realize NVRAM was used and now watches his score
get deleted because the rules are quite strict in regards to no
NVRAM.

Now.... Johnny Bomber has NO SCORE registered, because when
he uploaded this new one and didn't realize the mistake, the old one
that was still impressive, got toasted.

An honest mistake [we're going to go along and for sake of this
argument, it WAS an honest mistake] suddenly has trashed the
problem score, but also annihalated the prior score.


K, to cover the other base here.. I will accept the next argument that
if he was good enough to score that high in the first place, he should be
able to do it again. Sure... perhaps the first submission may be attainable again... or maybe he just might be fed up and never wanna touch this game again. I can accept those ideas... both plausible and understandable.
But... there is the point that sometimes... be you good or poor gamer... when that magic moment hits... you can be in THE ZONE! Where no death can touch you, where no godly scoring act goes untouched upon... etc.

It'd be like Tommi nailing like 10 million in Tron, because he hit the zone, but finding out it used autofire inadvertently. Bye Bye 10 million, Bye Bye previous 2 million score.

You don't get in The Zone every time... well maybe some people like Todd Rogers can make it seem like that. But as I see it... one honest mistake removing everything...? If it was such a case as poor Johnny.. or Tommi... they MAY perservere... not allow themselves to be let down by this.. fight the good fight and show it wasn't a fluke and they are gods at those games... or... it could break them... making them never want to touch the game again. [Now that IS an extreme attitude, but it COULD happen and has happened]

Freeing up storage is a wonderful idea, I agree completely... but there should be SOME consideration to something like this. Keeping one or 2 older recordings of the game from the same player just in case this does occur, would be most ideal... especially in cases where you are correct, and someone's beaten there score and submitted a good 10+ times [during WCC's for example].

Your idea of the box to check fixes a lot of this... but yet again, the storage issue can come up again, or if someone doesn't realize about the option and the scenario or like occurs, then they're screwed.

Sound reasoning, but I'm wondering if my idea may work out better. Perhaps a combination of both? Where it automatically saves one or 2 old submissions, but you can have an option to NOT preserve the older ones?

Forgive me for rambling and going off on tangents and so forth. Heck.. probably could've summarized this easier. I did what I could to cover bases... my apologies if I missed something or could've clarified.


Kelly [who's now off to bed after typing this up]
Just a gaming junkie looking for his next High Score fix.
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Post by evil_angela »

I see one of two ways to get around that issue.

1) Let a person be able to easily access and delete their older scores. Thus when they have 5 inp's for a game, they can manually delete the lower ones when they feel like it. Thus if the event you mention happens, and they have no scores because they deleted them themselves, well, they decided to delete them.

2) Wait until a score is confirmed before having the lower one deleted. This could still be done automatically in the system, linked to confirming a score. And if a score is zeroed or edited to be lower than the previous score, the previous one replaces it.
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Post by LN2 »

Kelly, yeah, that would work ok.....keep the 1 previous replay file from that member for that rom set here also...but then automatically delete older ones. Maybe it could even only keep the 1 previous one if and only if it was already confirmed. If not confirmed, then delete it.

I know for example for Camel Try(funny that was mentioned) that QRS and I likely have 5-10 replay files for each of the courses for each of the clones uploaded to MARP.

All of the older ones are not of any use still being on the site really.

QRS and I had a nice competition going back and forth topping each other's top scores over a couple of weeks...until that competition was spoiled by someone else. I won't get back into that again.

Anyway, that means for Camel Try with it's 4 courses and 3 rom sets, that's 24 replay files on the scoreboard by QRS and I.

However, there likely are actually about 5-10 times that number from us uploaded to MARP.

This means the storage required just from us for that game is 5-10 times more than it needs to be.

Even though the zipped archives are pretty small from this game, it still can quickly add up. I checked my zipped inps for this game and they range from 30-60k each depending on which course was played.

So just from this 1 game alone from QRS and I it's likely about 3-6 megabytes of storage for older replay files are there that don't need to be.

Now multiply that by likely 100s of cases like this for other rom sets or players and you can quickly be up into several gigabytes of HD space wasted from obsolete inp files.

I know 2-3 other cases myself where I have gotten into a back-n-forth competition with 5-10+ submissions for 1 rom set over a few weeks. Major Havoc and it's clones between QT Quazar and myself is another good example.

There are other games where as you know even the zipped replay files are beyond 1 megabyte instead of only being in the 30-60k range....so it's hard to really estimate how much storage space for older replay files that have no use here is.

I totally understand your point of if the new score is rejected by an editor, that the old one gets reinstated I guess when the new one is deleted....so perhaps keeping the previous one would be good for those cases. I look at it though where MARP could have a new feature where you get autonotified via e-mail when a score has been deleted.

For active players, this would have them upload their older score...if they had deleted their older score then it's their loss.

It should be the player's responsibility to keep a history of their own replay files.

Not all that many overall versus the number submitted are rejected. To automatically store all the older ones from each player when in a vast majority of cases new uploads will eventually be confirmed and not rejected just doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

I didn't even realize this was the case until a few months ago. I always assumed with a new replay file upload that when it told me the old score of *whatever* was deleted, that included the replay file also cuz that would make sense...but it obviously doesn't.

For someone to manually go through the file history and they decide from those and viewing which are confirmed which older replay files stay or get deleted would be an extremely tedious and time-consuming task.
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Post by wuzel »

Zteuer wrote:
wuzel wrote: - we keep our score in secret only at this game and u can say 4 ultrabaloon (but it was due 2 our meeting)
What about your breakout meeting?
breakout??? it was a game like this???
dont think so and think u are wrong about the game name and about almost everyting :(

we had one meeting and during it we were plaiyng UBALLOON
It's good 2 be here with U guys :)
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Post by wuzel »

Weehawk wrote:
BBH wrote:
wuzel wrote:that was the games in which we found sth new sth ql and sth 4 making points of
......
No matter how long I stare at this sentence, I just can't make any sense of it.
Presuming that "sth" ="something", I think this would translate to: "these were the only games in which we discovered an innovative technique for scoring points"
once again sorry 4 my english and shotcuts :)
sth= something
It's good 2 be here with U guys :)
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Post by wuzel »

i cant understand 1 simple thing
okey mine(our) method is lame, bad etc but what connection it has with other people uploads????
why cant dax or.....any other player play as good as he only can while he didnt know my score - i dont understand :( i dont know the last score of any player at marp running this Tournament until the clock is 00:00 GMT
then i know all the scores 4 that round - sooner i dont!!!!!
so ....i m playing and trying 2 make a high score and dont think what other player is doing right now
i repeat my question: what was the logical explanation of posting a score at about 400 000 using our method ofr example at monday??? i could do it but what 4??? to see at firday evening that someone did a score at about 1mln using this (lame) method??? bleh dont think so :(
so.... i dont care who will have a socre at which level at friday i play and counting only on myself.
so hiding score is only bad looking but using this like a defence of ones worst performance is 4 me bad explanation.
It's good 2 be here with U guys :)
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Post by QRS »

Play as you want. No one can stop you. Just don´t expect it to be many people 'competing' that way. In the end you and Destructor will be the only one in a tourney like this.

I respect your opinion, and I hope you respect mine.
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Post by destructor »

Team is team.
Amen :wink:
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Post by The TJT »

STH! 8)
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Post by Zteuer »

wuzel wrote:
Zteuer wrote:
wuzel wrote: - we keep our score in secret only at this game and u can say 4 ultrabaloon (but it was due 2 our meeting)
What about your breakout meeting?
breakout??? it was a game like this???
dont think so and think u are wrong about the game name and about almost everyting :(

we had one meeting and during it we were plaiyng UBALLOON
Mistake, I meant: What about your blockout meeting?
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Post by destructor »

We lost. Because we don't have puzzleman master. Great puzzleman is Abbe 8)
BlackTiger @HotTeam.pl has good score after first try: 220k but he didn't record it and didn't help our team because he was drunken and he drink until end of round 1 (Polish vodka) :D You was lucky Zteuer :D
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Post by Zteuer »

destructor wrote:We lost. Because we don't have puzzleman master. Great puzzleman is Abbe 8)
BlackTiger @HotTeam.pl has good score after first try: 220k but he didn't record it and didn't help our team because he was drunken and he drink until end of round 1 (Polish vodka) :D You was lucky Zteuer :D
Ahhh so this was the guy who made the blockout inps for you guys :D
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Post by destructor »

Yes. For all:
adi @HotTeam.pl (beginner player)
asn007 @HotTeam.pl (player without time to play :) )
BlackTiger @HotTeam.pl (master of some games)
czarnian @HotTeam.pl (player)
destructor @HotTeam.pl (3 tournaments winner)
DieseL @HotTeam.pl (air shooters master)
gruntowy @HotTeam.pl (player)
karol @HotTeam.pl (master prehistoric games)
wuzel @HotTeam.pl (searcher leeching and others method)
8O
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