weekly contest VGS NES Weekly Contest - World Games!

[0xDEAFC0DE | 1,277]

7 hours ago, the_wizard_666 said:

And officially I have now managed to consistently get 46'11" every time.  It's not even tough really...the hardest part is the timing of everything.  If you are moving too fast, at 16 steps the caber automatically falls on your head, so keep the pole wobbling a bit, or intentionally flub the timing to get past it.  Then you just speed up to 31 steps, and let fly.  There's a bit of leeway with the timing of the steps too, so it's just a matter of getting the timing nailed down enough to get there (you can lose the caber early if you're too slow).  I also think 46'11" may very well be the upper limit of the event, barring using whatever exploit @0xDEAFC0DE is using.

Hey! Nice job. It's definitely not too bad once you get the rhythm down. 46' is definitely the limit without my exploit.

4 hours ago, BeaIank said:

Fine. Slalom it is then.

Ugh fine. I wasted so much time on Caber Toss, lol. But really Slalom by far takes the most skill. It's going to be really hard to get 3 decent runs without faults. How does the scoring work in case of faults?

[the_wizard_666 | 1,325]

@0xDEAFC0DE Good point there.  I think the best course of action would be to just get rid of the three scores thing, as it just needlessly complicates things.  I'd just go with the original rules, minus the gold medals (as it's really redundant to do that anyway).  While most of the max scores are doable with some practice, there's a few there that would definitely pose a challenge.  Bull riding and sumo are both pretty random with their scores, as I can't seem to figure either out.  Apparently the C64 version of World Games had the score set prior to the run, only appearing after a successful ride, so it's a true crapshoot as to how high it goes (although higher ranked bulls trend higher, it's no guarantee - I've seen 70+ on Ferdinand, and < 50 on Earthquake on multiple occasions).  Sumo however, there seems to be some sort of scoring, but how it actually works seems to be elusive.  Thus Slalom is really the only event that requires actual skill to master.  And I honestly don't see myself doing much better than my current submission (not that I won't be trying).

Anyway, as much as I love the game, it's entirely too broken for realistic competition.  Even if Slalom was the only event used in future contests, I don't see it being a good pick for the genre.  It's too bad, but I think @BeaIank may need to make note of it as a poor choice in the future.

Also, more people need to start posting stuff.  I understand people not posting scoreboards yet (even a reset wipes it out, making for some difficulties for people on actual hardware), but even some further commentary from the crowd would be nice.

[BeaIank | 1,617]

2 hours ago, the_wizard_666 said:

@0xDEAFC0DE Good point there.  I think the best course of action would be to just get rid of the three scores thing, as it just needlessly complicates things.  I'd just go with the original rules, minus the gold medals (as it's really redundant to do that anyway).  While most of the max scores are doable with some practice, there's a few there that would definitely pose a challenge.

Fine. This is the final rules revision. I removed the slalom requirement.
I just made it so that the caber toss exploit cannot be used.

[0xDEAFC0DE | 1,277]

2 hours ago, BeaIank said:

Fine. This is the final rules revision. I removed the slalom requirement.
I just made it so that the caber toss exploit cannot be used.

Hmm, should I just take a picture of getting 46'11" in the caber toss then since the world record is already 99'11" on that screen for me?

Also what changed for Slalom? It still says to take three pictures is that correct?

[the_wizard_666 | 1,325]

She probably just hasn't actually done the edit yet.  I wouldn't sweat it at this point.

[NESfiend | 1,514]

20 hours ago, the_wizard_666 said:

 

Regardless, it's now obvious to me that the game is completely broken for competition purposes.  It's sad, cuz I love the game.  It's a great party game too.

I wish my life included parties where people played games like this and I haven't even really played it. All the multi event sport games would be great for that. Ive just never known anyone else whod agree with me there. California games I played in some smaller groups as a kid, but thats it as far as this format goes

[Dr. Morbis | 2,088]

24 minutes ago, NESfiend said:

I wish my life included parties where people played games like this and I haven't even really played it. All the multi event sport games would be great for that. Ive just never known anyone else whod agree with me there. California games I played in some smaller groups as a kid, but thats it as far as this format goes

The best, most UN-broken NES party game in the same vein as World Games is Capcom's Gold Medal Challenge '92.  Then again, if we picked it for this competition, 0xdeafcode would no doubt come in with all the code hacks and break that one too... C'est la vie.

I personally think this week's event should just be Slalom because that's the only one that takes skill and can't be abused/hacked to get a "perfect" score.  Even knowing what a perfect score is in all the other events inherently breaks them.  Like, imagine if the 100m dash in the real Olympics had a "perfect" time and every four years the compo was just seeing how many black dudes could hit it?  It would take the wind out of any event on earth for sure.

I was super happy reading Bea's "fine Slalom only" post, till you idiots ruined that and had all the fucked up events added back in, meaning there will be a shitload of ties and a ton of needless calculations for Bea to do.  FWIW, I'm personally considering whoever wins at Slalom to be the TRUE winner this week, regardless of the standings at the end...

[Dr. Morbis | 2,088]

9 hours ago, the_wizard_666 said:

Also, more people need to start posting stuff.  I understand people not posting scoreboards yet (even a reset wipes it out, making for some difficulties for people on actual hardware), but even some further commentary from the crowd would be nice.

If you had left it at "Slalom only" and let go of all this confusing and convoluted bs here, people would start posting more.  Seriously, the more complicated you make it, the more people say "fuck it."  Slalom only is a quick, easy rule-set, and it's performance based.  I certainly suck at it now, but it would be much more fun getting better at that than spending a day trying to get hard-coded "perfect" scores in all these other sham events...

[the_wizard_666 | 1,325]

32 minutes ago, Dr. Morbis said:

If you had left it at "Slalom only" and let go of all this confusing and convoluted bs here, people would start posting more.  Seriously, the more complicated you make it, the more people say "fuck it."  Slalom only is a quick, easy rule-set, and it's performance based.  I certainly suck at it now, but it would be much more fun getting better at that than spending a day trying to get hard-coded "perfect" scores in all these other sham events...

By the same token, "slalom only" would beg the question - why not just play Slalom instead?  The game was selected with the 8 game tourney in mind.  The fact that the maxes are far easier to hit makes it obviously not feasible for the future, but why change things so massively to essentially fuck with anyone who was stoked to play the entire cart.  Also, the scoring system accounts for this as well, as "in the event of a tie one point will be awarded to each tied participant."  Meaning that in broken games, if you max it out you get a point, and if you don't you don't get that point, but it won't heavily factor in to the finish at all because the scoring already accounts for it, making the skill based game (slalom) and the luck based ones (bull riding and sumo, at least so far as I'm aware).

Anyway, I'm tempted to save scum a couple rounds of bull riding to see if the game truly does just assign a random score like the C64 version does.  Essentially play through an attempt, then reload the attempt to see if the score and pattern change.  And also to play through all three attempts and do the same thing, to see if it's at the start of the attempt or the start of the round that the score gets assigned.  Still no idea how sumo works though.  Like at all.

[the_wizard_666 | 1,325]

1 hour ago, NESfiend said:

I wish my life included parties where people played games like this and I haven't even really played it. All the multi event sport games would be great for that. Ive just never known anyone else whod agree with me there. California games I played in some smaller groups as a kid, but thats it as far as this format goes

I hear ya.  Aside from @Dr. Morbis I don't really have many people who regularly drop by to play random games either, and there's so many good tournament games to be had.  Hell, even WWF Wrestlemania is pretty sweet with six players!

[0xDEAFC0DE | 1,277]

3 minutes ago, the_wizard_666 said:

Anyway, I'm tempted to save scum a couple rounds of bull riding to see if the game truly does just assign a random score like the C64 version does.  Essentially play through an attempt, then reload the attempt to see if the score and pattern change.  And also to play through all three attempts and do the same thing, to see if it's at the start of the attempt or the start of the round that the score gets assigned.  Still no idea how sumo works though.  Like at all.

Oh, yeah I meant to respond early. It's only a little random. You definitely do get more points for using a harder bull, but it's also easier to lose points that way. At the end a random number between 0 and 15 is added on to your score. The rest isn't random at least. 

For sumo you get points for being fast and for performing certain moves.

[0xDEAFC0DE | 1,277]

52 minutes ago, Dr. Morbis said:

FWIW, I'm personally considering whoever wins at Slalom to be the TRUE winner this week, regardless of the standings at the end...

That's a lot of talk with little action. I've put down a decent Slalom score, waiting for you to beat it.

[Dr. Morbis | 2,088]

14 minutes ago, 0xDEAFC0DE said:

That's a lot of talk with little action. I've put down a decent Slalom score, waiting for you to beat it.

No joke, Slalom is my second worst event right now. I was playing this game with Wizard on Sunday, and the only thing I performed more poorly on was the Caber Toss.  I guaran-damn-tee you will destroy me this week and rank higher.  However, I will definitely set aside an evening and give it the ol' college try for a couple of hours and whatever I score is whatever I score.  Congrats on being smarter with code than the rest of us

[the_wizard_666 | 1,325]

28 minutes ago, Dr. Morbis said:

Congrats on being smarter with code than the rest of us

You make it sound like that somehow gives him an edge on execution.  While it helps give an idea of how the game functions, he still needs to actually pull it off.  And considering I was giving you literal step by step instructions on the caber toss and you could barely make a successful throw, I'd say that's proof positive of this point

49 minutes ago, 0xDEAFC0DE said:

That's a lot of talk with little action. I've put down a decent Slalom score, waiting for you to beat it.

Let's be real here, he's just salty that he's gonna have to drop $20 in my pocket at the end of the week

52 minutes ago, 0xDEAFC0DE said:

Oh, yeah I meant to respond early. It's only a little random. You definitely do get more points for using a harder bull, but it's also easier to lose points that way. At the end a random number between 0 and 15 is added on to your score. The rest isn't random at least. 

For sumo you get points for being fast and for performing certain moves.

That makes sense.  Sounds like they tweaked the formula in porting the game.  I also noticed something odd - I scored a 73 on Ferdinand, but it didn't replace my high score of 71 (achieved on Earthquake).  I'm wondering if there's a hidden modifier for the bull used that affects the score without changing the numerical display?  Because this has happened a few times.  Hell, on our gaming session Sunday, it actually happened where a lower score replaced a higher one on multiple occasions.  As for sumo, that sounds like it'd be accurate as well, although I feel like there's a degree of the random too, as I've done exactly the same thing multiple times and received extremely varied scores.  Also, don't waste time pushing your opponent out of the right side of the ring - it takes a while and the points for doing it are not representative of the difficulty landing it.  My score came from a quick toss (not gonna say which toss...trade secret ) executed immediately.  However, I've done exactly the same thing and had sub 100 scores, so there's definitely more to it than speed and move selection.

[0xDEAFC0DE | 1,277]

1 minute ago, the_wizard_666 said:

That makes sense.  Sounds like they tweaked the formula in porting the game.  I also noticed something odd - I scored a 73 on Ferdinand, but it didn't replace my high score of 71 (achieved on Earthquake).  I'm wondering if there's a hidden modifier for the bull used that affects the score without changing the numerical display?  Because this has happened a few times.  Hell, on our gaming session Sunday, it actually happened where a lower score replaced a higher one on multiple occasions.  As for sumo, that sounds like it'd be accurate as well, although I feel like there's a degree of the random too, as I've done exactly the same thing multiple times and received extremely varied scores.  Also, don't waste time pushing your opponent out of the right side of the ring - it takes a while and the points for doing it are not representative of the difficulty landing it.  My score came from a quick toss (not gonna say which toss...trade secret ) executed immediately.  However, I've done exactly the same thing and had sub 100 scores, so there's definitely more to it than speed and move selection.

Yeah, there's definitely something broken with the high score thing. I've had that happen with Sumo. I've never seen a lower score replace a higher score though.

I think I know which toss you are talking about. That's what I've been using too. It's not random, but the time bonus doesn't go down at a constant rate. There are some real weird things that cause it to decrease one per frame.

[the_wizard_666 | 1,325]

10 minutes ago, 0xDEAFC0DE said:

Yeah, there's definitely something broken with the high score thing. I've had that happen with Sumo. I've never seen a lower score replace a higher score though.

I think I know which toss you are talking about. That's what I've been using too. It's not random, but the time bonus doesn't go down at a constant rate. There are some real weird things that cause it to decrease one per frame.

Makes sense to me, as we're only what, 13 points apart? (too lazy to look lol).  Feels like it's just a matter of getting perfect execution on it.

As for the score thing, it usually only happens when the scores are a point or two separated, and it seems like it's when achieved on a high level bull when compared to the lower score.  I also scored a 73 on Ferdinand, as I think I mentioned, yet it didn't replace my record of 71 (despite it saying 73 on the scoreboard).  So there may be some background shenanigans that aren't fully understood yet - my guess is that because it's a jump from very easy to very hard, there may be a "bull bonus" that's applied that doesn't actually change the displayed score, just the one in the code.  I've also had it happen when I had multiple successful runs in Slalom, where my winning score is not the best one, but the most recent one.  So it's almost better to fault out just to be safe if you get a great score.  That seems to be a random issue, as it doesn't happen universally, but it can happen.  Actually, I've noticed that in the log roll as well, now that I think about it.  Not sure the cause, but it's definitely annoying when it happens.

 

[0xDEAFC0DE | 1,277]

I've definitely been faulting the rest of my slalom runs after getting a better one to play it safe. Speaking of which, I just updated to 29.7. Woo sub 30!

[Dr. Morbis | 2,088]

19 hours ago, the_wizard_666 said:

Let's be real here, he's just salty that he's gonna have to drop $20 in my pocket at the end of the week

Only because you're emu-cheating and can literally dabble at the game all week and have your scores continuously saved on your pc.  I'm not gonna leave my NES on all week long to try and save a couple bucks, so my scores will actually be in a single session.  And btw, due to the outrageous comparative disparity between our overall gaming skills, this week is literally your ONLY chance to beat me and earn a couple bucks this year, so you better not blow it, you yellow-bellied emu-cheater

[the_wizard_666 | 1,325]

Well, being that I may be moving as early as September, and the sheer amount of shit I have to pack, this may also be the last week I have to devote any real time to the game.  That said, we can have another competition any time you wanna put your money where your mouth is, because outside of a couple events, I can easily replicate my scores.  Also, you know as well as I do that I have no qualms about leaving my NES on for days or even weeks, as I did with both The Mutant Virus and Back to the Future II & III, both games you are afraid to give a real attempt to.  So the fact that I'm basically doing the same thing as I would on hardware is honestly a moot point.  The only advantage I have using the emulator is the fact that I could switch from d-pad to analogue control, which is only useful on log rolling, and was something I would've solved by using a Quickshot or Advantage controller, making it also a moot point.

[Dr. Morbis | 2,088]

7 minutes ago, the_wizard_666 said:

The only advantage I have using the emulator is the fact that I could switch from d-pad to analogue control...

Well that and having the entire game spelled out to you by a code-hacker...

[NESfiend | 1,514]

Had planned to get to this a good deal tonight, but after a really long day, having trouble finding the motivation. Game seems great, but also seems to have a somewhat steap learning curve and is caveman games hard on thumbs. If thats way off, ive only tried a couple events, but they wore me out. Feel like that @docile tapewormdude getting too lazy for nintendo tapes. 

[docile tapeworm | 4,194]

@NESfiend lol i know i am! i missed out on two good games last couple weeks and setting myself up to miss the tourney  smh.

time brother. tough to come by these days.

 

[PII | 1,883]

7WR

If it was explained already and I missed it, my bad, but can someone explain exactly what it is that we're not supposed to be doing on the caber toss?

 

Edited December 18, 2023 by PII

[0xDEAFC0DE | 1,277]

6 hours ago, PII said:

If it was explained already and I missed it, my bad, but can someone explain exactly what it is that we're not supposed to be doing on the caber toss?

Press left and right in rhythm to walk as far as you can before throwing the caber. The caber has to thrown at a specific angle. 

[the_wizard_666 | 1,325]

@0xDEAFC0DE He asked what we're NOT supposed to do, which is your glitch for 99'11".  @PII I couldn't figure out how to pull it off myself, so I wouldn't worry too much about it.  It seems from his pictures that he'd barely (if at all) move, which makes it appear to be impossible to pull off without intentionally trying to do it...and since I couldn't figure it out even trying to do it intentionally, I wouldn't sweat it.