Donkey Kong Forum
Blogs => Player Blogs => Topic started by: f_symbols on May 08, 2013, 03:40:56 pm
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Ok, So I decided to look back at the photo's I've taken of my high scores since I began my quest. I took the data (scores and date, dip switch setting) and compiled a chart and some graphs. I haven't been keeping any data since I began streaming, but I could always reference my recording history if need be for future analysis.
I got my DK and Pac-Man cabs the day of Hurricane Sandy. I was able to play them for about 2 hours, before the power began to flicker, I immediately turned my new babies off. The power was out in my neighborhood for a week, due to a downed power-line in my backyard. The following Sunday the downed line was replaced with a tight-rope taught speed job.
November 5th begins the DK adventure, I played for about a week and a half on 5 man settings, followed shortly thereafter by my first CAG PCB issue (another lost week). I had now switched to 3 men and was in need of some motivation (lacked progress) around the 350K mark and went to the "end of the world party" at Knuckles arcade; I watched Hank play a complete game to the Kill-screen at around 930k, asking him questions the entire time (In retrospect, I can't believe he dealt with me so well, while playing). That night gave me the motivation to get back at it.
Around the end of January I had a few games where I had run over 200K on a first men and my confidence was beginning to grow. On january 26th and 27th I had two games just under 600K; 596600 on my first and only game of the 26th (New PB by over 100K) and then a 595400 on sunday the 27th. On january 31st, I awoke to no power in my house, I looked out back to see that the tight-rope had snapped in a wind storm during the night. I went to work and came home to find a replaced power line and a house filled with broken (surged) electronics. It would end up as a $900+ settlement with the power company and 3 month electrical upgrade in the house. For the next 3 weeks I had no DK, due to a blown monitor and fried PCB.
After 2+ weeks of DK jonesin' I went to Knuckles on a random Friday to play me some DK, I arrived to meet a small long haired gentlemen by the name of George Leutz, totally oblivious to who he was or what he was doing. By the end of the night, I had gone from DK to Q*bert watching, and promised George I would "return to talk your ear off" on Sunday. I watched over 13hrs that Sunday and made some amazing new friends, but more importantly, George motivated me in a way words can not describe. As a side note, my cab actually got fixed the Saturday during George's marathon, but I refused to play it until he finished his game.
I purchased my webcam the night after George's marathon and the rest is history!
I want to thank everyone who ever stopped by my stream and kept me company, you guys rule. Here is the summary data set
(http://i1083.photobucket.com/albums/j389/bilythekid_lvdc/dk%20progress/stats_zps68f79b89.png)
In this chart I plotted days played rather than days since first game. I did this to remove the error associated with the 3 week hiatus due to explosion. When I did this, I got a much different (higher) value for progress rate, nearly 52,600pts gained per high-score increase, on 3 man settings.
(CORRECTION: I noticed that because this chart only includes high-score data points, It would be unrealistic to assume that these were the only times I played. That being said the slope of the line (M value) is not in the units of pts/days played, but rather, Points gained/high score. In reality, all of the M values, in the first and third figures, are in the units of Points gained/New high-score; Basically it shows the average number of points gained each time my high score increased.)
(http://i1083.photobucket.com/albums/j389/bilythekid_lvdc/daysplayed_zps03b58950.png)
Additional photos of every high score game and some first man personal bests can be seen in this folder , just make sure to sort the folder list by "oldest first"
http://s1083.photobucket.com/user/bilythekid_lvdc/library/dk%20progress (http://s1083.photobucket.com/user/bilythekid_lvdc/library/dk%20progress)
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Nice, dude! Niffty charts! Any chance you will make some of these for MS. Pacman (turbo/normal)?
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Ms. Pac-man speed-up chip arrived yesterday. Installed the chip, returned the cab to 3+1 dipswitch setting and managed to score 172,180 in 2 or 3 hours of play. My goal for today is 200k
Thanks again Jeff, you are the man!
UPDATE to OP:
(CORRECTION: I noticed that because this chart only includes high-score data points, It would be unrealistic to assume that these were the only times I played. That being said the slope of the line (M value) is not in the units of pts/days played, but rather, Points gained/high score. In reality, all of the M values in the first and third figures are in the units of Points gained/New high-score; Basically it shows the average number of points gained each time my high score increased. )
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You're going to rock the Ms. Pac-Man, buddy.
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Ms. Pac-man speed-up day 2: played for about 2 hours after work and hit 183k followed by 184230 to end the session. I need to learn to be patient (there's no timer) and I still have some timing issues to work out with the joystick/turning execution. I also will need to work on grouping for the screen without the energizers...
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How many boards are you clearing? Are working on JRTFBDN or grouping with the hold spots or whatever? I don't know a lot about Ms Pac strategy but you can eat ghosts all the way up to the 18th board or so right?
This is the game that might actually push me to buy an arcade stick for my computer...
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I believe I made it 29 screens (+/-2)
I am grabbing all the ghosts on the first 4 screens when possible, Also the first screen of Red, Blue and Pink(they have longer energizers) and then I JRTFB from there on out.
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Took a trip to the Knucklez Arcade today. It was really looking great; they've added a minimum of 7 more games by optimizing the floor space and the walls are slowly filling with more and more epic CAG schwag. I'd say that around 25 people came and went in the 2.5 hours I was there, but I did have my face buried in a cab, facing the back wall.
I was surprised to say the least, when I walked over to the KO1 machine and hit 1P start only to see the Mighty Kong go climbing the girders with a Jumpman in his hand. Apparently, the Role-reversal ROM's had been swapped into this cab. So, I had my first experience with Pauline tonight. It took me about 3 or 4 games to get the hang of a different 4-way joystick and the different sprite size (jumpman vs. pauline), specifically back-jumps.
Final conclusions: The game is the same, don't get lost in sprite differences, just rely on your "learned-feel" for the game and it will play identical. I remember around level 15 looking down at pauline and thinking "man, I can't remember the last time I even noticed that I'm not playing DK". My game ended at 672200 on the level 17 springs, It was Freeko's fault, as always.
Who's gonna up that Pauline WR next? Manhole, what?
(http://i1083.photobucket.com/albums/j389/bilythekid_lvdc/pauline_zps0d2b4c28.jpg)
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Blog Update, timely, as always.
http://www.twitch.tv/f_symbols/c/2846979 (http://www.twitch.tv/f_symbols/c/2846979)
This is my 12400 from yesterday, I see a possible loss of 3700 points, assuming the "perfect" finish, maximum points gained, no effect on other outcomes of the screen, only gains. 16k hype, Kappa YSG, etc.
Please feel free to correct me if I am wrong or have missed anything, I would appreciate the feedback :D
100pts- Barrel down broken ladder on bottom girder
200pts- Crossing 3rd girder to right; barrel from 4th girder did not steer
500pts- Fireball smash was awarded at 300pts
800pts- Fireball lost at end of bottom hammer
100pts- Barrel that steered down middle ladder 3rd girder before YOLO jump
100pts- Barrel down right-side broken ladder 4th girder (possibly a 200pt gain, depending on resulting groups under Kongs ladder)
100pts- missed group at long ladder left side 4th girder
100pts- Missed 3 barrel grouping at the 1000 bonus time
300pts- Barrel down the broken ladder on the 5th at the end of the hammer cycle
100pts- Barrel down broken ladder after the hammer expires (bonus timer at 300pts)
100pts- There was time for a single 2x100 on the top girder
2500pts "missed"
Note: there was 1 wild that was lost, I could have re-jumped the single blue barrel at the 1300 bonus timer mark and had 2 missed fireball leaches on the 2nd girder before the bottom hammer (100pts ea.); this gives another 400pts.
The ultimate optimism suggests that both fireballs would have had enough time to reach the 5th girder for the top hammer, 800pts more each. That's another 1200 possible pts with the above 400 and the 2nd fireball smash. Yet, another possible outcome for the second fireball would be to assume that this fireball never came into existence; the blue barrel, from which it was generated, could have been successfully steered into the first hammer, resulting in only a 700pt gain rather than the 800 as a fireball.
So either outcome would give between 1100 and 1200 more "theoretical points" in the perfect situation.
Adding the above 1100pts to the 2500pts from the first section gives 3600 (3700, assuming the 2nd fireball smash) possible points?? ?? ? :o :o :o :o wht da
Theoretical max scores for this screen would have been as follows..
12400 + 3600 = 16000
12400 + 3700 = 16100
BibleThump everywhere
I hope I am using Vincent math...
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Here is what I believe to be the "Final Draft" of the Hit-box Diagram. Fingers crossed... ;)
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Hitbox in the manhole...
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I just don't want this to get lost...
Donkey Kong Paper Art (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZInnmpq544#)
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Wht da. :o
Well... a challenge is a challenge.
Ethan, you know what you need to do.
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Today I reached a major milestone on pacman CE DX; 130M for "game mode total". My time investment was approximately 2.5 years and there were MANY MANY times that I felt I would never make it; I finally got the ghosts? off my back.
Sigh. That is all, ty for reading that. ;)
EDIT: What a long strange trip it has been
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Today I reached a major milestone on pacman CE DX; 130M for "game mode total".
Oh yer. Congrats buddy!
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Can't believe I missed all this good data!
Your progress was very quick. Most people plateau (reach a flat part of the learning curve) while your does indeed seem to fit a line. I'd ordinarily criticize trying to fit such data into a line as most people do not improve linearly.
I watched Hank play a complete game to the Kill-screen at around 930k, asking him questions the entire time (In retrospect, I can't believe he dealt with me so well, while playing). That night gave me the motivation to get back at it.
Yeah I can run boards without much attention now. With the exception of springs boards, I can pretty much hold a conversation. Point pressing barrels also takes lots of concentration for me. I'm glad that encounter inspired you to go further! Back then I had no idea who you were!
Am I reading your charts correctly? You were able to score 100K on your first day of playing? Even with 6 men that's impressive. I think it took me a week to get 100K on regular settings.
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pacman CE DX; 130M
Wow! What an accomplishment!
Next: 1M DK
Then: 131M before + :P
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Can't believe I missed all this good data!
Am I reading your charts correctly? You were able to score 100K on your first day of playing? Even with 6 men that's impressive. I think it took me a week to get 100K on regular settings.
I did. I remember looking back and thinking the same thing...
For what it's worth, I probably played for over 10 hours my first day, I had bought the cab nearly a month prior, waited two weeks for delivery, and then lost power for another week, less than 3 hours after it arrived; I waited "forever" to finally play. I had watched dean's 1.167 game in it's entirety, before the first time I played. I had also read a pdf of "how to win at donkey kong" as well as some of the posts at donkeykongblog, and I had also watched Richies' video on the level 4 springs. I was somewhat prepared for that first day.
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Today I reached a major milestone on pacman CE DX; 130M for "game mode total". My time investment was approximately 2.5 years and there were MANY MANY times that I felt I would never make it; I finally got the ghosts? off my back.
Sigh. That is all, ty for reading that. ;)
EDIT: What a long strange trip it has been
Awesome, Ethan! This takes a lot of dedication. Well done!
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Hello Friends :D
I had a pair of rather large jumps this evening that I wanted to share. I feel like these are basically pushing the maximum ⌂X for group-width. Apparently we can start to say XX_X pls, although the timing is a bit "tight".
Anyway, Enjoy!
Large Jump 1
http://www.twitch.tv/f_symbols/c/3508308 (http://www.twitch.tv/f_symbols/c/3508308)
Large Jump 2
http://www.twitch.tv/f_symbols/c/3508281 (http://www.twitch.tv/f_symbols/c/3508281)
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I had a pair of rather large jumps this evening that I wanted to share.
Nice, Ethan. I wouldn't have thought Large Jump #1 was possible.
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Large Jump 3 :D http://www.twitch.tv/f_symbols/c/3518263 (http://www.twitch.tv/f_symbols/c/3518263)
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I've posed this question casually to viewers in my channel a few times before -- I've often wondered if the point along the girder section from which you take off has any impact upon how wide of a jump is possible? For example, if by moving forward one pixel Jumpman also moves UP one pixel (while running uphill onto the next girder section), it would make sense to me that the entire trajectory of Jumpman would be higher if taking off from this higher point. This means that at the tail end of the jump, just before landing, Jumpman would be slightly higher and/or he might land further out. Also, if you were to take off on that first higher pixel, it would seem to me that you are allowing the barrels the longest amount of time to roll LOWER (as they roll downhill onto lower girder sections) before Jumpman decends upon them on the other side of the grouping.
I think it would be a fun experiment if someone (not me) would try to set up a MAME savestate of a very wide, but possibly jumpable barrel grouping and try jumping off of each pixel of a girder section and chart out the results to see if it might possibly matter on the fringes of super wide groupings. You'd want to use the memory address features within MAME to "see" the x/y location of the barrels in question so that we could know the exact width of the grouping and (also looking at Jumpman's x/y location) (see the DK code for memory locations) you could be sure that you were jumping from the latest possible moment (I'd imagine playing the game frame-by-frame would be useful). It would be interesting to know if any other factors come into play as well, such as "winding up" a jump by running the other direction and then quickly reversing and immediately jumping the other direction, or if it matters which Jumpman sprite is drawn on screen at the moment the Jump button is pressed, or if Jumpman's "lost" frame while running plays a roll in this as well (see the excellent Spring analysis which I'm too lazy to link to which shows that if Jumpman's approach begins on a "lost" frame, it can mean the difference between success and death on certain spring combos).
If it turned out that the location along a girder section DOES matter, I believe this is something that could be practiced and eventually executed when necessary.
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Yeah, I was thinking of this the other day also. The x distance is always the same, so you could help avoid the corners of the hitboxes if you get a drop on the y pixel to help there. Now the other day we were talking about girder slopes and it "appeared" that certain girders had more of a slope than others and I was sure they did slightly, but I finally did a test on that and every girder is the exact same slope.
If every pixel in the "x" moved it in the "y" it would be 45 degree angle slopes and we know that isn't. The slope appears to about 16:1, so for every x you move on a slope 0.0625 gets added to the y, pixels can't be drawn in fractions so it'll wait about 16 pixels (two girder pieces) before it moves up.
Mario needs to be flat on top of each drawn girder, and the program does a good job of keeping that constant. So, that mean to benefit from an extra y pixel, mario should try to jump right in the corner of a girder piece before the girder moves up a pixel.
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I had never thought about that Dean, but it does make a lot of sense; basically you can gain 2 vertical pixels (⌂Y) over the course of a "broad jump"so you'd want to, ideally, get one of the pixels at the beginning of the jump (allowing a later departure) and the other at the end of the jump (around the left edge of the last trailing barrel). I would say that I have NOT been actively jumping from spots that are "conducive" to this effect, perhaps even larger jumps are possible. So, essentially any up-hill running jump is going to gain a minimum of 1 vertical pixel, I'd imagine (no knowledge on debug) that statistically speaking, a 2 pixel jump is less common.
Dave, I remembered reading that barrel speeds were consistent, but I had often wondered if the slopes of the girders changed, thanks for that clarification.
I am adding another 2 videos; large jump(s) 4 and large jump 5. I think that large jump 5 may be the largest yet, although there were fewer barrels, it looks like jump 5 only had a ⌂Y + 1, implying there is potentially a bit more room.
Large Jump(s) 4 http://www.twitch.tv/f_symbols/c/3522830 (http://www.twitch.tv/f_symbols/c/3522830)
Large Jump 5 http://www.twitch.tv/f_symbols/c/3522859 (http://www.twitch.tv/f_symbols/c/3522859)
EDIT: I just noticed that at the end of "large jump 5" (last jump) there is a good example of a ⌂Y+2. Also, I've added a photo from just prior to takeoff.
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During a fit of spastic rage, following a death on 2-1 ::) , I discovered (accidentally) that you can do a 2x100 on the Blue Barrel. I'm not sure if it is applicable for later levels, but it was a pleasant accident.
http://www.twitch.tv/f_symbols/c/3892457 (http://www.twitch.tv/f_symbols/c/3892457)
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wow spastic grub hype. love it
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During a fit of spastic rage, following a death on 2-1 ::) , I discovered (accidentally) that you can do a 2x100 on the Blue Barrel. I'm not sure if it is applicable for later levels, but it was a pleasant accident.
http://www.twitch.tv/f_symbols/c/3892457 (http://www.twitch.tv/f_symbols/c/3892457)
Nice. Meanwhile, I'm still trying to figure out an item from your signature:
dk wreckerds: 3 jumps, 1 barrel, 1100₧
Can you help me understand that one?
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During a fit of spastic rage, following a death on 2-1 ::) , I discovered (accidentally) that you can do a 2x100 on the Blue Barrel. I'm not sure if it is applicable for later levels, but it was a pleasant accident.
http://www.twitch.tv/f_symbols/c/3892457 (http://www.twitch.tv/f_symbols/c/3892457)
Nice. Meanwhile, I'm still trying to figure out an item from your signature:
dk wreckerds: 3 jumps, 1 barrel, 1100₧
Can you help me understand that one?
No problem Scott.
It was on 1-1 near the bottom hammer; I had two fireballs to my right and an approaching barrel from the left, I got a 500 pt leach while jumping from right to left over the barrel and the 2 fireballs gave chase, they were nearly "frozen together" but not quite overlapping and I managed to get two 300pt jumps while heading left. The 3 jumps were back to back to back, as soon as I hit the ground. Ultimately I got hit by a barrel coming down the long ladder from the 3rd girder (avoidable). It's in one of my past broadcasts somewhere, but I never highlighted it and finding it at this point would be a nightmare. FailFish
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Awesome, Ethan! I'm adding that move into my 2-1 repertoire from now on!
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Awesome, Ethan! I'm adding that move into my 2-1 repertoire from now on!
You should add a kill screen to that as well <Allen>
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No need for a KS without first having a huge game to end it with.
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Little bit o' hitbox hype
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(http://www.awesomelyluvvie.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Tumbleweeds2.gif)