weekly contest VGS NES Weekly Contest - Quarth!

[Mega Tank | 960]

Just now, mbd39 said:

 

That............ doesn't look like the Famicom version.

 

Yea... I see that now lol It was the only playable version I could find. Oh well.

[Jeevan | 8,910]

Shit, almost missed it lol

166,331

[Jeevan | 8,910]

BTW, great game, came close to beating it that run, but never did, that is my goal now!

[Jeevan | 8,910]

Why a frown @Krunch?  You should be happy for me, if no one else submits this is the highest i have placed thus far without a tie........  

[Krunch | 303]

Heh heh I haven't got to use the angry one yet nah I'm just whinin cause I lost a point I'm happy for you @Jeevan but on a relative scale it's actually pretty minor anyways.  I somehow pulled something together on my lone run today, better than expected really

[Jeevan | 8,910]

also @FireHazard51 what happened to ya?

[BeaIank | 1,618]

Current standings posted.

[mbd39 | 2,020]

I reached level 7 a couple times, but my best score I only reached level 5.

Earlier today I had a run that was going great for the first few levels but then I kept getting C's so not much more than 150k. Stupid rng.

Deafcode says there's a trick to getting B's. I wish I'd known what it was.

 

 

 

[Jeevan | 8,910]

@FireHazard51

[mbd39 | 2,020]

This game really needed some other way to score big points other than depending on getting B's. There needed to be better rewards for clearing a lot of squares and getting big combos. It's kind of a lame score system for an otherwise extremely addictive puzzle game

[NESfiend | 1,515]

40 minutes ago, Jeevan said:

Shit, almost missed it lol

166,331

I did miss it. My son just really didnt want to go down in the middle of a great run. Hit 100k early in early level 5 and had only minutes on the clock. Had 5 lives, but had to keep killing myself just to get to a screen that showed the score before closing time. Figured out point racking and overall strategy just a little too late. Hard when you can only get a run or two a day at best. It was fun though once you got into it!

[Jeevan | 8,910]

1 minute ago, NESfiend said:

I did miss it. My son just really didnt want to go down in the middle of a great run. Hit 100k early in early level 5 and had only minutes on the clock. Had 5 lives, but had to keep killing myself just to get to a screen that showed the score before closing time. Figured out point racking and overall strategy just a little too late. Hard when you can only get a run or two a day at best. It was fun though once you got into it!

what was the final?  did i beat u or did u beat me?  

[Jeevan | 8,910]

@0xDEAFC0DE what is the secret to:

[NESfiend | 1,515]

2 minutes ago, Jeevan said:

what was the final?  did i beat u or did u beat me?  

I killed myseld 5 times just to get to a screen showing over 100k. I had 103. Highly doubt I beat you, but I think I could have jumped a few spots if I finished that run. 130-140 was def within reach 

[Jeevan | 8,910]

1 minute ago, NESfiend said:

I killed myseld 5 times just to get to a screen showing over 100k. I had 103. Highly doubt I beat you, but I think I could have jumped a few spots if I finished that run. 130-140 was def within reach 

In that run, I had over 40k, almost 50 iirc on level 2, i got super lucky on the B rng.  I had another run that would prolly have been higher, but I kept making dumb mistakes and dieing.  

[Krunch | 303]

Good job on this one everyone, other than Deafcode's gargantuan score the rest of the ranks ended up fairly competitive... but then again the point scoring options in the game are slim.   Pretty damn stressful game actually.  As much as I'd love to say I coulda been a (silver) contender I really did put the time in so IDK.  But I do know that the upcoming break week is HIGHLY APPRECIATED BY THIS GUY

[mbd39 | 2,020]

1 minute ago, NESfiend said:

I killed myseld 5 times just to get to a screen showing over 100k. I had 103. Highly doubt I beat you, but I think I could have jumped a few spots if I finished that run. 130-140 was def within reach 

I don't know. It's much tougher to get bonus points that late in the game. You pretty much need to get the bulk of your score earlier on while it's still slow enough to get huge B combos.

 

 

[NESfiend | 1,515]

4 minutes ago, mbd39 said:

I don't know. It's much tougher to get bonus points that late in the game. You pretty much need to get the bulk of your score earlier on while it's still slow enough to get huge B combos.

It was actually early in level 4. Its still paused from where I was after killing myself to get through that level. You are probably right either way, but I def left a whole lot on the table 

@BeaIank @guillavoie @Jeevan - can we get a break week thread to discuss what people are or are not playing, increases in productivity, depression, etc during the off time? Im sure @SuperJimtendo would draw some shit

[0xDEAFC0DE | 1,277]

1 minute ago, Jeevan said:

@0xDEAFC0DE what is the secret to:

So, the powerups are mostly deterministic. There are two ways of triggering powerups. One will get you an E or an S, and the other a B or a C. Once the powerup is triggered, there will be a randomly determined delay of how many pieces before the next bonus is spawned. I think it's possible the the delay will be zero in which case the powerup will be unfortunately skipped. If you already have a powerup on screen or active (in case of S or C) and you trigger another one, it will be skipped. If you have a powerup that is still awaiting the delay and trigger another one, the last one will be overwritten with a new one. I think there is also a bit more complexity to that, but I gave up reversing the code at that point.

To trigger an S or an E, you need to get 3 separate 3+ combos. Then you get a 50% chance of getting an S, 25% change of getting an E, and a 25% chance of nothing. To trigger a B or a C, you need to clear 256 blocks. The first one will be a B, and it will alternate between C or a B after that.

So, the technique is rush to 256 blocks by building long blocks, to trigger the delay. Then you want to clear some blocks to get started on the next B, but not enough to overwrite it with a C. Then, get the B and try to get another B before the C appears. If the C does appear, I tried to slow down so as to not skip the B. Sometimes I would even kill myself to skip it, since you also will skip the B if you pass the 256 mark with the double bonus active. Now knowing where you are in the 512 block cycle is pretty hard to figure out. I would try to do it by looking at the score to figure out how many block I've cleared, but it gets messy when you clear combos or get a B bonus, or C double. So, even still with my score I would miss many of the Bs. I don't quite remember my pacing, but I definitely did score the bulk of my points in the early levels since eventually it gets too fast to build up the blocks.

[Jeevan | 8,910]

6 minutes ago, 0xDEAFC0DE said:

So, the powerups are mostly deterministic. There are two ways of triggering powerups. One will get you an E or an S, and the other a B or a C. Once the powerup is triggered, there will be a randomly determined delay of how many pieces before the next bonus is spawned. I think it's possible the the delay will be zero in which case the powerup will be unfortunately skipped. If you already have a powerup on screen or active (in case of S or C) and you trigger another one, it will be skipped. If you have a powerup that is still awaiting the delay and trigger another one, the last one will be overwritten with a new one. I think there is also a bit more complexity to that, but I gave up reversing the code at that point.

To trigger an S or an E, you need to get 3 separate 3+ combos. Then you get a 50% chance of getting an S, 25% change of getting an E, and a 25% chance of nothing. To trigger a B or a C, you need to clear 256 blocks. The first one will be a B, and it will alternate between C or a B after that.

So, the technique is rush to 256 blocks by building long blocks, to trigger the delay. Then you want to clear some blocks to get started on the next B, but not enough to overwrite it with a C. Then, get the B and try to get another B before the C appears. If the C does appear, I tried to slow down so as to not skip the B. Sometimes I would even kill myself to skip it, since you also will skip the B if you pass the 256 mark with the double bonus active. Now knowing where you are in the 512 block cycle is pretty hard to figure out. I would try to do it by looking at the score to figure out how many block I've cleared, but it gets messy when you clear combos or get a B bonus, or C double. So, even still with my score I would miss many of the Bs. I don't quite remember my pacing, but I definitely did score the bulk of my points in the early levels since eventually it gets too fast to build up the blocks.

[mbd39 | 2,020]

5 minutes ago, 0xDEAFC0DE said:

So, the powerups are mostly deterministic. There are two ways of triggering powerups. One will get you an E or an S, and the other a B or a C. Once the powerup is triggered, there will be a randomly determined delay of how many pieces before the next bonus is spawned. I think it's possible the the delay will be zero in which case the powerup will be unfortunately skipped. If you already have a powerup on screen or active (in case of S or C) and you trigger another one, it will be skipped. If you have a powerup that is still awaiting the delay and trigger another one, the last one will be overwritten with a new one. I think there is also a bit more complexity to that, but I gave up reversing the code at that point.

To trigger an S or an E, you need to get 3 separate 3+ combos. Then you get a 50% chance of getting an S, 25% change of getting an E, and a 25% chance of nothing. To trigger a B or a C, you need to clear 256 blocks. The first one will be a B, and it will alternate between C or a B after that.

 

 

So it's best to avoid getting +3 combos when possible in order to not spawn S and E instead of B. It's a puzzle game where you get the most points for not doing big combos, nice.

 

 

[mbd39 | 2,020]

What decides whether you get B or C? It's possible to get a bunch of C's in a row without a B in sight.

[guillavoie | 1,208]

45 minutes ago, NESfiend said:

It was actually early in level 4. Its still paused from where I was after killing myself to get through that level. You are probably right either way, but I def left a whole lot on the table 

@BeaIank @guillavoie @Jeevan - can we get a break week thread to discuss what people are or are not playing, increases in productivity, depression, etc during the off time? Im sure @SuperJimtendo would draw some shit

 

Yeah sure man, that's an excellent idea! We might even throw in an off-leaderboard competition for those that would want to have something to play together and talk about.

[Krunch | 303]

Hmm B's every 256 eh somehow this makes sense, when I was in my earlier runs I was focusing, arguably over-focusing, on just building up and clearing quantity, I seemed to get more pink blocks then?  I was probably also getting less x3's so less S and E's.... but meh.  This just seems like some under-sophisticated item/score system where the average naked-eye results fall around getting "enough" but when considering the huge score difference for B in conjunction with all the placements of possible rectangles it gets quickly and harshly skewed.  Hard to break?  Perhaps.  The mechanics are still really good in spite of it all... but I won't necessarily be building a Quarth collectibles shrine either.

[Dr. Morbis | 2,088]

Holy shit... @Jeevan coming out of left field to knock me out of my silver spot!!!  I never got a chance to get back to this game and play for score this week, but I still need to beat the game for my personal list, and it looks like the best way to do that is to bank as many lives as possible to burn on the last couple levels.  Ergo.... you pretty much need to always play this game for score to bank as many lives as possible.  The game is incredibly flawed, but man, what potential...