BeaIank | 1,618 Events Team · Posted April 11, 2022 Share Posted April 11, 2022 Ladies and gentlemen, welcome! Get your plumbing equipment ready for this week we are laying down PIPES! Hard work lies ahead of our competitors this week, proving their worth in Pipe Dream! The rules for this week are: Pick mode A Pick level 1 and speed 1 Play till game over You cannot reach the game kill screen at the score of 8,388,600. You must stop playing before reaching that score. Highest score wins Genre: Puzzle The contest ends Sunday, 04/17/22 at 11 pm EST. Your user name should be written or typed on a piece of paper and be in the picture for your score to be valid. For speed runs that require video, that is not required. The entire TV screen, or computer monitor if you are playing on an emulator, MUST be in the picture for the score to be valid. No partial screenshots will be considered or accepted. No screenshots by hitting "print screen" on a computer will be allowed. You must take a picture of your computer monitor. There may be instances where this will be acceptable, but it will be at the discretion of myself and the contest organizers. Also, the use of turbo controllers is forbidden, as well as any cheat codes, Game Genies, slow motion functions, or save states if playing on an emulator. Also, we will only be using NTSC systems for the contests. The use of PAL systems will NOT be allowed. Good luck everyone and have fun. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BeaIank | 1,618 Events Team · Posted April 11, 2022 Author Share Posted April 11, 2022 1st 0xDEAFC0DE 8,388,500 2nd the_wizard_666 1,117,550 3rd Krunch 757,100 4th Splain 371,750 5th PII 232,350 6th Jeevan 208,250 7th Dr. Morbis 172,900 8th RH 87,050 9th mbd39 52,050 10th JamesRobot 42,300 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dr. Morbis | 2,088 Posted April 11, 2022 Share Posted April 11, 2022 (edited) SCORE EDIT - F this game, 172,900 Edited April 16, 2022 by Dr. Morbis Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PII | 1,883 Posted April 11, 2022 Share Posted April 11, 2022 1 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Krunch | 303 Posted April 11, 2022 Share Posted April 11, 2022 I've just never been good at Kung Fu but I am up for this challenge. It's about pipes right? 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JamesRobot | 5,788 Events Team · Posted April 11, 2022 Share Posted April 11, 2022 (edited) 42,300 Edited April 11, 2022 by JamesRobot 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Splain | 2,560 Editorials Team · Posted April 11, 2022 Share Posted April 11, 2022 371,750 1 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
0xDEAFC0DE | 1,277 Posted April 11, 2022 Share Posted April 11, 2022 2 hours ago, BeaIank said: If you are about to loop the score, take a picture before the loop and after the loop for every score loop you do It's worth noting that looping the score is impossible. The game hits a kill screen around 8,388,608 points (= 2^23). I've tried playing around with this in emulator and the bug seems to have different effects depending on when it is triggered. Sometimes it just freezes, sometimes the palette and other graphical things get corrupted. I haven't gotten around to triggering it on a real console yet, but I imagine the emulators aren't far off from what will actually happen. So, what should be done if someone hits that score? Should we just take a screen shot right before the kill screen? If multiple people hit the kill screen is there a tiebreaker? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
0xDEAFC0DE | 1,277 Posted April 11, 2022 Share Posted April 11, 2022 I took a brief look at the code while I had some free time on a car trip, so here's what I found (just how the piece randomness works) Spoiler The next pieces are chosen in groups of 8. 7 of them are guaranteed to be the cross, the two types of straight pipes, and the four types of curved pipes. The last one is completely random (if the level is three or higher that random one will include the one-way straight pipes). Then these 8 pipes are shuffled randomly. RNG manipulation is totally possible and should be fairly easy. The RNG is almost only called when picking a new set of pieces and when generating starting boards which are all totally controllable. The only exception I've found is that the RNG is called once per frame during the slash screens. However, it shouldn't take too long to mash through them on a specific frame to hit a set seed. After that, you can plan a route to your hearts content. Also, it's not going to be relevant to anyone, but the RNG itself is extremely strange and unlike anything I've seen before on the NES. It probably has some patterns, but it actually seems to take way longer to repeat than other NES RNG I've seen. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
the_wizard_666 | 1,325 Posted April 11, 2022 Share Posted April 11, 2022 (edited) 1,117,550 Now, I probably could've done better if I was any good at the bonus levels, but since I am lucky to get like 500 points on them, they're pretty much a waste of time. Thankfully I'm good at building loops, as I'd probably have a @Dr. Morbis level score without it I probably could've gone longer, but fuck, I'm done with this game... Edited April 18, 2022 by the_wizard_666 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Krunch | 303 Posted April 11, 2022 Share Posted April 11, 2022 (edited) 757,100 Edited April 17, 2022 by Krunch 1 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeevan | 8,910 Events Helper · Posted April 11, 2022 Share Posted April 11, 2022 Mario's favorite game!? Reservation for 1, maybe, if i can find some time to play it! 208250 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rdrunner | 422 Posted April 11, 2022 Share Posted April 11, 2022 I've hit the kill screen score a few times. In my experience, the screen is still readable enough to see the whole scoreboard. Since this usually happened to me after a bonus stage, what I used to do was manually add the bonus stage points to my score. This created a fun challenge of seeing how big a bonus I could hit once my game was about to end. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeevan | 8,910 Events Helper · Posted April 11, 2022 Share Posted April 11, 2022 6 minutes ago, rdrunner said: I've hit the kill screen score a few times. In my experience, the screen is still readable enough to see the whole scoreboard. Since this usually happened to me after a bonus stage, what I used to do was manually add the bonus stage points to my score. This created a fun challenge of seeing how big a bonus I could hit once my game was about to end. do you have a youtube vid of it? I need all the help i can get Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeevan | 8,910 Events Helper · Posted April 11, 2022 Share Posted April 11, 2022 Since I forgot to post and fell asleep on sunday night.......participation score posted at least 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PII | 1,883 Posted April 12, 2022 Share Posted April 12, 2022 (edited) Lol, I just had another great 8-year-old moment courtesy of @JamesRobot Lol Edited April 30, 2023 by PII 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rdrunner | 422 Posted April 12, 2022 Share Posted April 12, 2022 22 hours ago, Jeevan said: do you have a youtube vid of it? I need all the help i can get Sorry, but no I didn't save the game footage or I would have posted it. Hint: Bonus stages. It's all about the bonus stages! 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mbd39 | 2,020 Posted April 12, 2022 Share Posted April 12, 2022 I played the DOS version years ago as a kid. I'm playing the NES version now and I suck. I may have cracked 10k once. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
the_wizard_666 | 1,325 Posted April 13, 2022 Share Posted April 13, 2022 I just finished 3-2, have just under 70K, and have not yet died. Honestly, I'm more bored than anything. game's too easy! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RH | 4,898 Posted April 13, 2022 Share Posted April 13, 2022 (edited) 87050 Might try this again. We’ll see. Edited April 13, 2022 by RH 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mbd39 | 2,020 Posted April 13, 2022 Share Posted April 13, 2022 (edited) I feel like Lisa in that Simpsons episode where everybody can easily solve the puzzle on her frozen dinner except for her. It's like I have trouble thinking ahead to lay down the pipe correctly. I keep needing corner pipes and not getting the ones that I need. EDIT: I know you can replace pieces but that also deducts points. I assume that high scorers keep that to a minimum? Edited April 13, 2022 by mbd39 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
the_wizard_666 | 1,325 Posted April 13, 2022 Share Posted April 13, 2022 53 minutes ago, mbd39 said: EDIT: I know you can replace pieces but that also deducts points. I assume that high scorers keep that to a minimum? I never noticed it costing me points, but it hasn't made much of a difference to me overall. Still haven't died yet at the end of 4-1, and am just under 100K points. Just don't leave unused pieces on the blank spots on the board...after clearing the level it docks points for each unused piece. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PII | 1,883 Posted April 13, 2022 Share Posted April 13, 2022 (edited) 232,350 That feels a little better. Still eatin' it pretty hard though in the bonus rounds, which feel like Tetris ate something strange from the forest. 140,150 This one's a fun time!, like Loopz complicated cousin..... who's not welcome at thanksgiving dinner. Edited January 29 by PII Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PII | 1,883 Posted April 13, 2022 Share Posted April 13, 2022 3 hours ago, mbd39 said: EDIT: I know you can replace pieces but that also deducts points. I assume that high scorers keep that to a minimum? I think its better to replace than to leave leftovers. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
0xDEAFC0DE | 1,277 Posted April 13, 2022 Share Posted April 13, 2022 On 4/11/2022 at 12:12 AM, 0xDEAFC0DE said: It's worth noting that looping the score is impossible. The game hits a kill screen around 8,388,608 points (= 2^23). I've tried playing around with this in emulator and the bug seems to have different effects depending on when it is triggered. Sometimes it just freezes, sometimes the palette and other graphical things get corrupted. I haven't gotten around to triggering it on a real console yet, but I imagine the emulators aren't far off from what will actually happen. So, what should be done if someone hits that score? Should we just take a screen shot right before the kill screen? If multiple people hit the kill screen is there a tiebreaker? Still a bit curious on the rule clarification here. @BeaIank @guillavoie Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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