forums.marpirc.net

I think it's the time to vote for a clear, additional rule, in submitting recordings, to avoid the "spam" we're assisting at in the last weeks.
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I hope this proposal won't be read as an "elitist" censorship, but the main reason for that is just to encourage anyone to submit "quality" scores, and, on the other hand, to save nowadays precious server CPU time (and disk space).

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My proposal is : scores worthing less then 50 points (means 59% of the top score) will be refused. Of course, if a score drops down below this value (but was above when submitted) due to better scores submissions, it will be kept!
An alternative could be to set the limit to 50% of the top score (that means to worth the player 43 points) (this one easier to calculate!!! ) .
The only exception to this rule will be to accept a recording if it ranks #2 or #3 (look at the Amidar scores, for example!).

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If you think this proposal is too restrictive, feel free to suggest lower limits.

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The way that will be implemented is up to Zwaxy: could be a script running (yet another one!!!) at any upload, or someone receiving the e-mail notification, whith "deleting power" (the notification will have to be slightly modified to show the points worth by the submitted recording.)

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Please, vote!

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Ciao
Cicca

--
cicca@writeme.com

To be honest with you... 50 points or 50% of top is WAY too
restrictive... I'll go with a 5 or 10 point minimum... then again we
do need to acknowledge the little CPU time we've got...

<p>

I guess my answer would be an unaffirmative I don't know I guess
25 points is much more reasonable... Or the top five.

--
goldengameboy@yahoo.com

I think the keyword "spam" may be useful.
<p>

Instead of rating a score for an individual by setting a standard
from previous players scorings for other players which may not ever be
attained by lesser individuals. Thus never letting a subplayer from
ever participating in a particular event.

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A "spam" uploading rule may be a better alternative then limiting a
players ability for submiting scores.

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Would it be easier for Zwaxy to limit all individuals to say 10
submissions a day or calculating a score for submission material?

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I think a daily submission limit would alleviate part of the "lame"
score submissions as it would promote getting a better score since the
individual would have more time to gain a better score by more game
time. Unless they used that extra time to have a life or something.

--
info@kaupp.cx

I think it'd be best to have only top 3 scores of each game, if it's
necessary to have some restrictions. Different games have different
scoring systems, so 50% is too much. Think about "marathon" games,
Galaga, Gauntlet...

--
tiihoto@hotmail.com

One problem with restricting scores with only a certain number of top
score.
For me, there will be no way ever in HELL I could get within 1% of
Krogman's score in Galaga. Does that mean it is lame??? HELL NO...
To me, 100,000+ is a damn good game...
Banning those takes away from MARP's original idea in the first place.

--
cparsley1@hotmail.com

Yesterday, I was talking to SportsDude on ICQ, when I sort of came up
with the idea of having a threshold score for each (or most) games.
For most games, this threshold could be set to the game's default
high score, although this obviously would need to be changed for some
games (eg: TMNT). Anyway, anyone under that threshold score (ie:
deemed to be a "lame recording") would get maybe 20-25% of what they
would normally. Hopefully, this will decrase the effect of people
like QT Quazar (he does have a number of good recording though) and
others of uploading scores for virtually every game there is.
Anyway, this is just an idea, and you can all debate all you want...

--
bsr@hn.pl.net

I've thought about a lot of the points here, and just add my views:
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1) I really don't see the point of uploading scores that only get 1
point or so. They're certainly not going to be downloaded by anyone,
and are obviously only there for the leaderboard points; is it worth
it? I'd agree with a minimum of 5 points, or maybe even 10.

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2) Delete all games that max out - Domino, Bowling etc... Or give
everyone max points on all of them. I'm as guilty as many of grabbing
the 100 points on a few of these.

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3) Games like Pacman, Galaga etc - there's obviously an element of
skill somewhere here, as following the patterns requires some skill.
Surely these are worthy for people to download, to see how the
patterns work for example? Also, if someone plays the game for that
long like Galaga for 20,000,000+ then they deserve the leaderboard
points. And I too would be proud to get 1% of that, and not care
about the 1 point

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4) Clones - keep the clones. Most of them are different enough to be
classed as different games. For example, here in the UK I never saw
Donkey Kong - only Crazy Kong (mainly the Scramble h/w bootleg
version).

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5) I think there's a point to keep more than just the 3 top scores as
well - some of the 4th placed scores are quite close to the top, and
losing 50+ points when you get a 3rd placed score beaten might be a
bit painful.

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6) Stop letting people get an email for ALL submissions - they are
too lonely and need to go out more.

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That's it for now - I'm sure I'll think of more.

--
crash@tcp.co.uk

I, too, am for keeping the clones, but not ALL clones. The ones that
are identical shouldn't be included. In that case, I think only the
"main" version should count. A good criterium for determining if two
clones are identical is by creating an inp on one and seeing if it
plays back correctly on the other. Yes, I know that MAME stores the
name of the romset in the inp, but that's easy enough to change when
testing if it plays back on another clone. For instance, although I
haven't tested any of this yet (and forgive me for bringing Crazy Kong
up again, but it's just about the only game I play), I am pretty sure
that the inps created by ckongalc and monkeyd (I'd call this version
"Crazy Kong") are interchangeable, and I am pretty sure the
same holds for ckong, ckonga, ckongjeu, and ckongo (I'd call this
version "Crazy Kong II"). ckongs, dkong, and dkongjp are all distinct
versions. This would at least cut the number of CK/DK variants down
from 9 to 5.

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As for minimum scores/points: Perhaps some script could be written
that is run once a week or so and that purges the system from
submissions with too few points. Obviously, submissions that have 0
points can always be removed, and as long as a submission doesn't take
a top 3 spot, points that are below a certain number (5 or 10 sounds
good to me too), should be removed then too. Sure, people may be very
proud of their achievements, but, as said before, nobody really will
download those, so the proud people should just keep the recordings
for themselves (hey, maybe even put those on their own websites).

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I also agree that games for which a maximum can relatively easily be
reached (so that would not include Pacman) should be excluded. I have
actually changed my scores for those games to 0 on the leaderboard.
Now if only Zwaxy would simply delete the files...

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Pattern games should be kept in. To some extent at least, lots and
lots of games are pattern games. Most people have learnt those
patterns the hard way (using trial and error while spending lots of
time, money, effort, ...), and even if they hadn't, then still it
requires skill to master the patterns. Pacman has been discussed so
often and for so long, and patterns that work are common knowledge.
But it still requires skill, and I think the fact that a perfect score
on Pacman is so rarely achieved is proof of that. The same goes for
those other games. If Steve Krogman scores over 20M points on Galaga,
and his inps are readily available, then why aren't there lots and
lots more of multi-million point Galaga submissions? Because it still
requires skill.

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I think that limiting the number of submissions per individual per day
is not going to work. People can too easily just save the surplus for
a day on which they will not reach the maximum number...

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In addition to the point limit, there could also be a position limit.
Keep only the top 10 scores or something for each game. Let's face it,
nobody is going to download the number 17 recording. BUT... I have
sometimes downloaded a recording that wasn't one of the top scores
because the recordings for the top scores wouldn't play back on my
version of MAME. I know that on my .35 version of MAME32, I can't play
back any inps created on .34 or earlier versions (or even some of the
.35 beta versions). And downloading an earlier version of MAME doesn't
always work either, since lots of the roms have been renamed, and it's
extremely hard to find older romsets. I don't know exactly what the
solution is... as long as the emulation itself hasn't changed, a
conversion tool (that converts older inps to a format that can be
played back on newer versions of MAME) can easily be written. I may
actually do that because there are some recordings created on earlier
versions of MAME that I'd like to see and can't because I don't have
those earlier versions and because my romsets don't work with those
earlier versions. And I'm not even talking about merged romsets.

<p>

Just my thoughts.
Cheers,
Ben Jos.


--
walbeehm@walbeehm.com

No more comments in the last 48 hours, so I think it's time to
conclude this thread, and take a decision.

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OK....let's summarize:

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my proposal (more likely a provocation): refuse scores worthing less
then 50 points (unless they are #2 or #3)

<p>

Gameboy9 : 5 or 10 points minimum (25 more reasonable) or if within
the Top 5.
IMHO: 10 points is reasonable, but refusing recordings below #5 will
discourage "good" submission, and will bring us back to the 10-3-1
scoring system.

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Dave Kaupp : limiting the number of daily upload for each player.
IMHO: sounds a good idea.

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Tommi Tiihonen : having only the top 3 scores.
IMHO: back to the 10-3-1 scoring system.

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Chris Parsley : No restrictions
IMHO: do you really want MARP bombed of 1 or 2 points scores !?!?

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Barry Rodewald : give 25% of the score worth if below the game
default hi score
IMHO: default scores are usually TOO low, and also cannot easily be
done with a "light" script, I guess.

<p>

Crash : a minimum of 5-10 points.
Ben Jos Walbeehm : remove submission that worth 0 points or don't
reach #3 or worth less than 10 points.
IMHO: see above.

<p>


Weel, it seems that a points limit is the rule preferred by most of
the contributors (10 points is the most reasonablelimit), and should
be applied.
D.Kaupp idea is fine too, and could be applied (1, 2, max 5 uploads a
day per player) in addition to the points limit rule.

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Now it's up to Zwaxy, and to his time!

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Cicca

--
cicca@writeme.com

Cicca,
I never said I wanted MARP bombarded with, as you put them "lame"
scores.
But, there are WAY too many problems with trying to deal with what
you see as an issue.
I guess I will have to go through them one at a time.
A) Who is to define what is lame? Simply put, if you can score only
20,000 in bagman, and BBH can score 230,000 in his sleep, does that
make your 20,000 score lame? That score would only get less than 10
points for the uploader, but it doesn't mean it's lame.
B) Who's to police what is a lame score? As it is right now, there
isn't enough manpower to keep up the ban list, the confirm list, or
anything else at MARP, and you want to add another to the list.
C) What you want to do is against MARP philosophies...
MARP is the Mame Action Replay Page, and that is what it should be
and remain forever. Does that mean we only allow the action of the
top few players in a game, or everyone like MARP was started for, and
should be?
For instance, next to nobody would be able to post in Galaga under
the rule you are trying to get voted in. Steve Krogman monopolizes
that game, with good reason, he is DAMN GOOD at it, but that means
most normal of the road players wouldn't have a chance in hell of
posting under the proposed rule of yours, Cicca.

<p>

MARP has been, and I hope will be forever, a place for all to come,
not just the best of the games. We always try to encourage new
players to join us, but with the rule you want to impose drives
anyone new away. If you see a 15M score on Galaga, and know, unless
you can get credit for 10 pts on that game, you will never be able to
submit, why even try??? Is that what we want, a MARP that shrivels up
and dies??
BTW - for 10pts at galaga, someone would need to do a game of over 3M
(Considering first at 15M)

--
cparsley1@hotmail.com

OK, maybe another way of doing this is to leave it to those who
verify the scores. Each score uploaded will start with a pending
status. Verification would be either that the score is either
reasonable or below par (sounds better than "lame"), and best out of
3 (or 5, maybe) is what would be shown on the search pages. Those
with "below par" scores would get reduced points (25%?).

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- Barry Rodewald

--
bsr@hn.pl.net

Barry, your suggestion I feel would fall due to two reasons...
One) How can someone else decide what is lame to a particular's
person's skill For instance, I can't do anything against Krogman's
Galaga score here. Does that mean any score I post is lame? I WOULD
CERTAINLY HOPE NOT.
2) You suggestion would be rather memory and resource intrusive. The
thought when starting this banning "lame" scores was to save on
MARP's system resources. What you want to do would take a rather
heavy usage script. I've wrote them before...

--
cparsley1@hotmail.com

I didn't comment on this earlier because I didn't see a really good
move to solve this. I still don't see a complete solution.

<p>

As limited as it might be, the only suggestion on the list that
doesn't cause any new problems is the "10 scores per day" idea. Yes,
people can just sit on the scores until they're all posted, but I
think it's more likely the forced wait will encourage working on them
a little longer. It would also help balance the MARP server workload,
regardless of the impact on submissions.

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Aqua

--
aquatarkus@digicron.com

I have changed my opinion.
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Wipe out everything I've said - this is now what I say:

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I think a 10 game upload limit is reasonable... but I have to go with
Chris Parsley here - if somebody else think a score is lame - so be
it - if that player thinks it isn't lame - then darn it let him/her
upload it. Chris's galagads example was a very good one. It may not
earn any points - but heck it could be quite impressive to the
player. This was my original opinion on the issue - and I'm going to
stand by it.

--
goldengameboy@yahoo.com

I thought this board is here to discuss, to make proposals, and to
take decision to slightly, or deeply, modify MARP to make it a better
place. I'm afraid I was wrong......
My suggestion of a rule for submissions was not to make MARP a temple
of gods in MAME (I'm below #40 !!!, and any rule, even if proposed by
me, will be valid for me too!!!), I instead wish more and more ppl to
come, and play, and rise the leaderboard.
But I felt a mood of disappointing in the way of getting points from
someone here, and I tried to collect opinion if a rule could be set
up (my 50 points limit was really a provocation!). Out of 7 messages,
6 were for limiting submissions.
Now....the only solution seems to be limiting the number of daily
submissions....... ok..... carry on...... but do it!!!

<p>

Anyone can feel free to submit their recordings, and get points, to
their own discrection....

--
cicca@writeme.com