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Re: K8 - Round 2 - Puzzle Bobble 2 (pbobble2j)

Posted: Sun Oct 31, 2010 4:34 am
by sawys
A short recall to be sure that everyone won't submit his best score recorded now on the very last days :
6. Recordings must be submitted within 48 hours of creation, except for the last day of competition on a round, anything submitted on the last day must be uploaded within 24 hours of playing.

Re: K8 - Round 2 - Puzzle Bobble 2 (pbobble2j)

Posted: Mon Nov 01, 2010 4:33 pm
by gameboy9
sawys wrote:A short recall to be sure that everyone won't submit his best score recorded now on the very last days :
6. Recordings must be submitted within 48 hours of creation, except for the last day of competition on a round, anything submitted on the last day must be uploaded within 24 hours of playing.
Yeah, that rule has been in effect ever since the end of the 2nd Knockout Tournament in 2001. Maybe with a slight modification between then and now, but not much. I remember the semi-finals of that tournament like it was night and day... basically it was just... here's the game... *whistles for seven days*... OK, show your hands! Well, that was exciting... wasn't it...

Unfortunately, you can't do much about this rule... save maybe forcing everybody to stay on the internet while recording while WolfMESS immediately submits the recording to MARP. This is something I've proposed previously, at least on HARP anyway, but, alas, I would probably get a lot of resistance from those who can't stay on the internet forever, which is completely understandable.

Re: K8 - Round 2 - Puzzle Bobble 2 (pbobble2j)

Posted: Mon Nov 01, 2010 7:34 pm
by Phil Lamat
Other solution would be to give 1 point to the leader on day #3, #5, #7.
So you win 2-1 or 3-0.
And force the guy you're facing to submit something before last day, or he lose 1-2 whatever the big score he submits on last minute :wink:

Re: K8 - Round 2 - Puzzle Bobble 2 (pbobble2j)

Posted: Tue Nov 02, 2010 8:48 am
by gameboy9
Phil Lamat wrote:Other solution would be to give 1 point to the leader on day #3, #5, #7.
So you win 2-1 or 3-0.
And force the guy you're facing to submit something before last day, or he lose 1-2 whatever the big score he submits on last minute :wink:
That is a good idea, and I know you implemented something very similar to this in your WCC... I think the only issue I see is that I know of are players who can only play over a certain set of days... if those days only include the "point on day #7"... then they lose by default.

Re: K8 - Round 2 - Puzzle Bobble 2 (pbobble2j)

Posted: Tue Nov 02, 2010 9:18 am
by Phil Lamat
It won't change a lot : does someone starting to play on day #7 have any chance against someone playing a whole week ?

Re: K8 - Round 2 - Puzzle Bobble 2 (pbobble2j)

Posted: Tue Nov 02, 2010 10:24 am
by Haze
Short of WolfMAME being networked and sending the replay data in realtime you have no solution, and I can imagine how much fun that would be if the connection lagged, or dropped out mid-recording on a record breaking run.

Dates can be faked, easily. If somebody wants to beat this rule they just set their clock to the last day, and record everything that way.

Why don't people do this during the first rounds? Is it because they don't know who they're playing against?

If so, you could change the way it works slightly, so all people know is that *half* the people will be dropped this round, but not actually drawing who plays who until AFTER the scores have been submitted, that would work until the final but may not give the same feeling of competition. That way as soon as somebody does post a score everybody KNOWS they have to beat it or risk being eliminated tho, but would people bother?

I think you just have to accept with the current method people will play their cards as late as they can.

Re: K8 - Round 2 - Puzzle Bobble 2 (pbobble2j)

Posted: Tue Nov 02, 2010 11:53 am
by gameboy9
The other idea I once had, and I can swear I've proposed this previously on MARP, is that if somebody defeats an opponent's recording in the last 24 hours, that opponent gets 24 hours from the time of submission to beat the score, even if the original time limit runs out in the interim. If that score gets beaten, then the original "defeater" (can't come up w/ a better word) gets 24 hours from that point in time. There would probably have to be an "absolute deadline" of some sort, potentially of 72 hours of extension.

That would potentially force a good competition, but keeping track of deadlines would get confusing, especially in this round, when you have potentially 16 different deadlines.

But you're right, Haze, it's tough to come up with a good rule to counter such play.

Re: K8 - Round 2 - Puzzle Bobble 2 (pbobble2j)

Posted: Tue Nov 02, 2010 1:13 pm
by MJS
I think I had proposed this in the past too... if not, then here it is:
Each day announce the "code" (a three letter word) and everyone playing that day must enter that code as the initials.
This should ensure a recording has been made in the last 24 hs, and can't be easily faked.
Of course, it is only possible for games with high score tables.

Re: K8 - Round 2 - Puzzle Bobble 2 (pbobble2j)

Posted: Tue Nov 02, 2010 1:29 pm
by GNU
Each day announce the "code" (a three letter word) and everyone playing that day must enter that code as the initials.
This should ensure a recording has been made in the last 24 hs, and can't be easily faked.
Of course, it is only possible for games with high score tables.
Very intersting idea. Could even be something else than changing the initials (for example pressing a direction several times at the menu, making a special move at the begining of the replay, etc... there are so many possibilities).

Re: K8 - Round 2 - Puzzle Bobble 2 (pbobble2j)

Posted: Tue Nov 02, 2010 2:18 pm
by gameboy9
MJS wrote:I think I had proposed this in the past too... if not, then here it is:
Each day announce the "code" (a three letter word) and everyone playing that day must enter that code as the initials.
This should ensure a recording has been made in the last 24 hs, and can't be easily faked.
Of course, it is only possible for games with high score tables.
This is a very similar idea to what is currently implemented during The Speccy Tour at HARP... Spectaculator(a ZX spectrum emulator) actually has a "week code" which the Tour uses that forces all players to use when submitting their recordings during the final week, or something like that. I don't recall anybody in that tour really complaining about that rule, therefore, I find MJS's idea to be a spectacular one. :)

MJS's issue may be this: what if they accidentally put ABD instead of ABC as initials by accident? Therefore, I would propose the modification to his idea presented above, and have WolfMAME programmed to enter in a "competition code" required during the last 24 hours.

Re: K8 - Round 2 - Puzzle Bobble 2 (pbobble2j)

Posted: Tue Nov 02, 2010 2:41 pm
by Kale
What about putting an encrypted code inside the inp file itself?

Re: K8 - Round 2 - Puzzle Bobble 2 (pbobble2j)

Posted: Tue Nov 02, 2010 3:28 pm
by shoesama
my internet is down so i'm uploading from lab (faster to upload through forum since I don't have to fill out submission fields)

edit: internet's back up

forgot to mention that the replay was on wolf99

Re: K8 - Round 2 - Puzzle Bobble 2 (pbobble2j)

Posted: Tue Nov 02, 2010 5:30 pm
by Chad
Kale wrote:What about putting an encrypted code inside the inp file itself?
This is what gb9 was reflecting on the spectrum emulator and wolfmess does inside the inp. It has the option -tournament (specifically for the speccy tour for weekly tournament number verification) and can be added to wolfmame with a patch copied from the wolfmess source. In theory, it is more secure to record the secret code in initials, but still not infallible with rerecord techniques. I.e. someone can make a recording a year ago, then start recording while playing it back (using hacked mame code), stop the playback and add in the correct initials for the tournament and finish the recording. For bullet proof security you need 100% internet connection and "keys" that prove the player is not playingback an old recording (not possible with open source.)

Re: K8 - Round 2 - Puzzle Bobble 2 (pbobble2j)

Posted: Tue Nov 02, 2010 6:29 pm
by mahlemiut
I'm pretty sure tournament mode RZX files are encrypted, don't know about with WolfMESS, haven't looked at Skito's code for that as yet. RZX encryption is done with standard GNU encryption libraries, so it shouldn't be too hard to implement, hopefully.

Re: K8 - Round 2 - Puzzle Bobble 2 (pbobble2j)

Posted: Wed Nov 03, 2010 6:42 am
by ballas
[quote="gameboy9"]MJS's issue may be this: what if they accidentally put ABD instead of ABC as initials by accident? quote]

I think then you do this #-o , and then restart your run :lol: