Tag Team high score

Weehawk · Post by **Weehawk** » Sat Aug 21, 2004 12:53 am

rickdeckard wrote:Thanks back to you BBH. Since you raised the bar so freaking high I'm feeling inspired and managed to get my own personal best, 442,640. I'll keep chugging, please share any tips and answers to my above queries.

Just found myself thinking man, the Satan's Hollow section of MARP is all of the sudden not looking so dusty anymore!

Would it be too much trouble for you to use a more recent version of MAME, preferably WolfMAME?

.36 is...well....ancient. A lot of people probably can't even run it on their current machines.

And with WolfMAME people can have greater confidence that you are playing the game at full speed, not using pause, etc...

Thanks.

BBH · Post by **BBH** » Sat Aug 21, 2004 12:58 am

Weehawk wrote:
rickdeckard wrote:Thanks back to you BBH. Since you raised the bar so freaking high I'm feeling inspired and managed to get my own personal best, 442,640. I'll keep chugging, please share any tips and answers to my above queries.

Just found myself thinking man, the Satan's Hollow section of MARP is all of the sudden not looking so dusty anymore!
Would it be too much trouble for you to use a more recent version of MAME, preferably WolfMAME?

.36 is...well....ancient. A lot of people probably can't even run it on their current machines.

And with WolfMAME people can have greater confidence that you are playing the game at full speed, not using pause, etc...

Thanks.

Normally I would agree, but the presence of the vile 0.63 bug is going to make for recordings that won't play back for every single person, no matter which version of WolfMAME is used.

I think tgmame62 may be the best version to use here, but I still haven't gotten a chance to try yet.

Post by **mahlemiut** » Sat Aug 21, 2004 1:11 am

Has anyone tried one of these games affected by the 0.63 bug with the new input port system? Probably a long shot, really, but worth a try? (Then again, Aaron's major core changes are just as likely to make it worse

)

The TJT · Post by **The TJT** » Sat Aug 21, 2004 1:27 am

(Then again, Aaron's major core changes are just as likely to make it worse )

Hehehehe

BTW, mention some bug63 games to start with...

...Now I can get rest of the 720 series?

rickdeckard · Post by **rickdeckard** » Sat Aug 21, 2004 5:13 am

Heheh sorry about that, I was only using .36 because it's the most current windows version hosted on MARP. Believe it or not it runs flawlessly on my machine. Anywho, I'm extremely new here so forgive my newbie ignorance on that kinda stuff. I'll snag this tgmame62. If BBH says it's good, that works for me. I definitely wasn't pausing or messing with throttles or any of that but I can understand people being doubtful of strangers so I'm all for using a secure version to record.

I'm pretty sure I can break 500k in the next few days but oh that 700k for the go-ahead is going to be tough, if not impossible for my aging reflexes. Just ONE MORE bridge, eh BBH?

Congrats on another fantastic run on set 2, intense!

EDIT - Hmm, is alphamame basically the same thing as tgmame? I can't find a download for tgmame62 but I have alphamame62 which I needed to watch BBH's recording.

Weehawk · Post by **Weehawk** » Sat Aug 21, 2004 5:43 am

EDIT - Hmm, is alphamame basically the same thing as tgmame? I can't find a download for tgmame62 but I have alphamame62 which I needed to watch BBH's recording.

Same thing.

Post by **mahlemiut** » Sat Aug 21, 2004 5:50 am

http://wolfmame.marpirc.net/

You can get pretty much all versions of AlphaMAME and WolfMAME from here.

rickdeckard · Post by **rickdeckard** » Sat Aug 21, 2004 6:06 am

Excellent thank you. Couple questions about using alphame62 if anyone can help please.

In mame32 .36 there is a double display size option that fills up the screen much better for me. This doesn't seem to be an option with alphamame, is it a frowned-upon thing or just something that died away with old mame versions? Note I don't care for how 'hardware stretch' looks so that's not really an option for me.

I like to remap the left and right movement keys but alphamame apparently does not save any changes you make from session to session. How can I tell alphamame to always use the remapped keys so I don't have to set them every time I play?

Post by **mahlemiut** » Sat Aug 21, 2004 6:32 am

Without using hardware stretching, your best option is to set up a video mode that more or less matches the arcade resolution (512x480) and run MAME fullscreen. Running MAME in a window that is not 1x1 pixel size is dreadfully slow in software. With hardware stretching, you can get even sized pixels with the -cleanstretch switch.

rickdeckard · Post by **rickdeckard** » Mon Aug 23, 2004 11:22 am

Awesome thank you, I got it going pretty good now with a custom resolution. I like that Wolfmame too, very nice.

So BBH I managed 561k this morning. The interesting thing about this is that my strategy going in was 'build and cross' as fast as possible and never dally with a completed bridge, run across it, grab the bonus and move along. Even so, your top game finished 2 waves behind me yet your score was 90k higher. I mean sure, had I completed 1 more bridge I'd have had the high but that would have meant at least 6 more waves. Doing the math, had you completed 8 more waves you would have had another bridge too and been somewhere just shy of 800k. This is what's so great about MARP. I can now go back and analyze your session to death and figure out the master's moves.

EDIT - Conclusion, you are a master of efficient bridge construction. Your total bonus points, 424k while I had a meager 327k. We ran neck and neck up to wave 23 but after that your bridge skills allowed you to outscore me 381k to 285k in bonus points. Final wave for you 85, me 87. Awesome work, because of this I've thoroughly stomped my prior personal best, proving that after 15 years the old reflexes are still intact!

BBH · Post by **BBH** » Tue Aug 24, 2004 8:28 am

rickdeckard wrote:EDIT - Conclusion, you are a master of efficient bridge construction. Your total bonus points, 424k while I had a meager 327k. We ran neck and neck up to wave 23 but after that your bridge skills allowed you to outscore me 381k to 285k in bonus points. Final wave for you 85, me 87. Awesome work, because of this I've thoroughly stomped my prior personal best, proving that after 15 years the old reflexes are still intact! :lol:

Well, I've watched your recording just now, and I've noticed that our playing styles are indeed very similar... but our patterns at the beginning are pretty different, the second time you crossed the bridge, you did it after destroying Lucifer, and before the next flag was added. I never cross after destroying Lucifer, I wait for the next wave. And on another point later you crossed after destroying the last enemy during a regular wave... I do that too on the second wave, but that's the only time I do that.

What I think it comes down to, is that in my opinion you tend to destroy the gargoyles too fast on the "easy" waves. I know it'd be very embarassing to die there, but I think it's worth taking the risk and destroying every enemy one at a time for maximum bridge pieces, only destroying extra gargoyles should they get too close. The extra bridge pieces I picked up here are what may have very well made the difference in our scores... enough pieces for just one bridge obviously makes a huge difference at this point in the game.

I guess I still have to keep on my toes and work on improving before you pass me :)

rickdeckard · Post by **rickdeckard** » Tue Aug 24, 2004 1:05 pm

You're absolutely right and I've been working on exactly that since I posted that score. Making good progress based on your recording and the points you mentioned above.

Another interesting note is that I was off in my wave calculations. You cleared 85 flags but didn't get credit for 11 due to bridge crossings whereas I cleared 87 flags but had only 9 bridges. So, we both died on the same accursed wave 96, go figure.

After the bridge crossing around wave 23, you managed to stay VERY true to getting back across the bridge in 10 waves or less whereas I often went way over 10 due to sloppy bridge construction and a bit of ill luck with the rock-droppers. I think this was the key to your success. You didn't falter, always managed to find a way to get a bridge built in 10 or less, regardless of the difficult waves.

I would think a real breakout game is possible here, scoring well over a million using exactly these strategies. I think we both pretty much know how to handle every wave the game throws down at this point and I'm not sure the difficulty will even ramp up anymore past wave 100. This is probably uncharted ground, I really don't think anyone has ever put in this kind of time before to explore the upper reaches of this game.

By the way, I spent some time the other nite reviewing your MARP postings and I was astounded at how many games you excel at. Just unbelievable, how do you do it? I think if you held BBH-CON I'd pay just to go see you play arcade games on a big screen projection.

EDIT - Good grief, is this http://www.twingalaxies.com/index.aspx? ... 39&vi=1461 Twin Galaxies stuff for real? If so, boy do I feel pwnt. 43 million??

rickdeckard · Post by **rickdeckard** » Wed Aug 25, 2004 1:13 pm

Never mind that TG stuff, that is just insanity. I prefer MARP scores posted by real HUMANS I can chat with.

Just for posterity and future reference to SH players, I did some more analysis of our recordings.
Some Interesting points (set 1 exclusive):

The game is always the same up until screen 22 (~ flag 19 if you follow our recordings). After that, the sets of 3 gargoyle waves appear to be a random selection from the 7 total varieties but with the distinction that no wave is repeated within the set. However, after about screen 85 (~ flag 75) you might see the same wave twice in a set, even back to back.
I cannot find a pattern to this at all, night cycles do not seem to be a factor.

With no pattern, finite lives and never truly knowing what to expect next, I can't see how someone could keep up the frantic pace for 30+ million points. Oh ya, I wasn't going to talk about TG. Anyway, it seems to me this game is indeed a true test of gaming mettle and not mastered by rote memorization.

EDIT - Oh and I finally took 1st with 739k. You'll laugh to see how my last man died but man my endurance is not what it used to be, that's a fast pace to maintain. I'm thinking you'll have a higher score uploaded within 48 hours.

BBH · Post by **BBH** » Wed Aug 25, 2004 11:39 pm

rickdeckard wrote:By the way, I spent some time the other nite reviewing your MARP postings and I was astounded at how many games you excel at. Just unbelievable, how do you do it? I think if you held BBH-CON I'd pay just to go see you play arcade games on a big screen projection.

Well, there's always The 4th Annual Shock Troopers Invitational. (inside joke.)

nice score, haven't had a chance to watch it yet but will later... you really should stick with AlphaMAME 0.62 for this game though, because this game has a playback problem with later versions that will prevent some people from being able to properly play back the recording.

I was trying to up my own score with 0.62 but I've been getting nowhere, so I give up on this game for now. I'll come back to it when I have more time.

rickdeckard · Post by **rickdeckard** » Thu Aug 26, 2004 9:06 am

Fair enough, I need a break too, the keyboard fire / shield thing kills my wrist, ouch. Thanks for the competition man, we really gave MARP some respectable Satan's Hollow representation. I'll play from time to time since I feel like I can hit a million on a really good day. I'll check back from time to time to see if you've snuck in a new recording.
Take it easy BBH.