Donkey Kong Forum
Blogs => Player Blogs => Topic started by: up2ng on May 18, 2013, 08:14:36 pm
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Ok, I suppose it's about time that I started my own blog in order to share my ideas about the game of Donkey Kong in a less formal and more stream of consciousness sort of way and also to share my experiences about playing this game and other classic arcade games.
So far, I have been very impressed at how much this forum has taken off, how much the community has expanded and how well things are run here that I finally feel comfortable that I am starting such a blog at the right place! If I inadvertantly begin some strategy discussions here that may be useful in the Basic or Advanced Strategy sections of this forum, I certainly hope that the mods will make the information available in those sections as well -- I'd rather they didn't actually CUT and paste any discussions as it would be strange to have content removed from a blog, but if the information were COPIED and/or LINKED in some manner that would be perfectly fine.
First things first, I want to say that I feel like I have met a lot of amazing people and have made some great friends since discovering this little competitive classic arcade gaming scene back around 2007, right around the time that I stumbled upon and watched the KOK movie. More than anything, that is what has kept me interested in participating in competitive CAGing in general and in this game in particular. It also came around during a particularly chaotic period of my life and it has been very useful to have found a hobby that I really enjoy and an interest that I can share with other great people when I really need a couple of hours here and there to get away from the stresses of real life and to do something fun instead. So, thank you to all the folks around here who have given me support and friendship over the years.
Hopefully a few people will find my posts here useful or at least interesting along the way, and if not, then I guess this will serve as sort of a public diary with respect to this hobby which would be fine in and of itself anyways.
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Hey, Hey, Hey, Dean is here!
Not gonna lie, this is the blog I've been waiting for! Glad to see you'll be discussing some of your journey with DK and not just high-level strategy. I arrived after your 1.136m and 1.153m games and I always love hearing about 'back in the day' when Ross was posting on the Million Point March thread and you were picking up the game again after getting like 250k or something like that. Wish I coulda been there, but KoK hadn't found it's way to me yet. ;)
Good luck with your 1.2m attempts! Keep pushing through.
IN THE FACE! IN THE FACE!
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Ok, so by far the biggest obstacle for me right now -- and I'm sure many of you can relate -- is the length of time required to play a full game of DK. And I'm not talking right now about the physical and mental fatigue that inevitably sets in towards the tail end of a long game while playing at a high level, which is a very real obstacle that prematurely ends a lot of great games for most people. No, I'm talking about how many of us have pretty crazy lives on a day to day basis and finding a 4 hour block of time to yourself with no interruptions where you're not worried about the time and you're not preoccupied with real life problems and you happen to be fully rested and awake and ready to kick some butt -- those opportunities are feeling downright rare lately. I have to confess that these days, at least 70 - 80% of the time that I fire up a live stream of my games I know in the back of my mind that I have almost no shot of finishing a game during that session. I'm cutting things too close timewise and I know I have to be somewhere, or I know that my family is likely to come back home after visiting with neighbors for a play date within the next couple of hours, or a million other possible things that just put that little bit of doubt in the back of your mind which messes with your mental state just enough to be unable to play at 100% -- and with DK generally if you're not at 100%, it ain't happening. That doesn't mean it's not possible though. I can remember specifically one of my PR games began after 3+ hours of failed attempts and restarts and I was just about to wrap it up for the night after 2am when all of a sudden a Start broke out, and then all of a sudden I had passed Level 6 and then Level 8 on the first man -- so I looked at the clock and just mentally buckled down and tried to focus and somehow managed to kill screen that game at after 5am, completely exhausted. So, it's possible, but it would be so much easier if ideal conditions were to present themselves a bit more often so that I'm not feeling rusty when a good opportunity arises.
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My focus with the game right now and for the last year or so is to break 1.2 million points. When I first set this goal it was definitely out of reach. Even while point pressing with all of the main pressing tactics that many people are aware of and are well documented, this number is just a bit too high to hit so it requires finding a lot of small improvements and taking just a bit more risk than most people are willing to take. Think about averaging 10,000 points per screen for the whole game (including the early levels) -- that's only 1.16 million. How about a simple formula of beginning Level 5 with 130,000 points and then averaging 60,000 points per level for the rest of the game (something no one has ever done when not including points with lost men) -- that's just 1.15 million. Coming up with that extra 40,000 - 50,000 along the way on TOP of fully pressing the game is just massively difficult. At any rate, it has been a bit of a "holy grail" score among most players for a long time and for the last several months I feel like I have all of the pieces in place to make it happen -- IF I can ever execute at a high enough level for over 3 straight hours, which is obviously extremely challenging. I'll keep you all posted on my progress towards that goal here.
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Some gameplay stuff I've been working on:
Barrels:
One significant improvement that I've made technique-wise over the past several months -- nearly every time I execute a broad jump of a barrel(s), I make a conscious decision about which direction to press the "stick" while in the air. I had been doing this for a long time while performing standing jumps, but only pretty recently have I been doing this such a large percentage of the time for broad jumps. It can make for some awkward or difficult movements that may be problematic for arcade players, but I am proficient enough on a keyboard so that I can do things like run left, make a quick adjustment back to the right, quickly switch back to the left to (left) broad jump a double group of barrels, immediately press and hold RIGHT while in the air to claim my 300 points while travelling left in the air, then hit the ground running LEFT again. And do this constantly, literally every 1 or 2 seconds or so. It's a ton of extra inputs for a relatively small impact on the game, but it IS an impact if making these decisions well.
I'll often combine this with another relatively recent improvement -- which is to often look TWO levels up for opportunities to group barrels. For example, I might be running RIGHT on the 3rd girder towards a the small ladder, getting ready to group and jump two barrels. While doing this, I look to the upper left corner and notice a different group of two barrels on the FIFTH girder right under Kong that could be grouped on that small ladder. So, as I'm broad jumping the current group of barrels to the right, I'll press and hold LEFT while in the air to group up those other barrels -- once I land and climb the small ladder, that other group of barrels will be coming towards my on the 4th girder. If I had run left to group those barrels before broad jumping to the right, I would have lost a lot of efficiency, and by the time I got all the way back into position to climb the small ladder, that other group of barrels which I just grouped up might have rolled too far along to allow me to safely climb the small ladder, so now I delay my climb, which often leads to further delays, missed barrels and lost points. By doing this maneuver in the air, I continue with efficient climbing while getting an extra 100 points off of those two barrels which otherwise may not have been grouped.
Tactically, I've really been trying hard to maximize points while transitioning from the bottom hammer to the top hammer, which often results in chasing a triple group back down from the 3rd girder to the 2nd girder -- definitely a high risk / low reward maneuver due to the world of crap that can line up to haze you while getting back up to the 3rd girder in the lower left corner, not to mention really bad potential problems with the fireballs. Most top players have deemed these tactics to be just too risky. I'll admit, even after lots of practice trying to make this work, I still have mixed results and a lot more deaths than I otherwise would have. However, I do think that if done correctly tactics like this SHOULD yield significantly more points than just beelining up to the top hammer. The tricky part of the tradeoff is that delaying the run to the top hammer loses time (you don't technically lose BONUS on barrel screens, but you CAN lose additional barrels and additional opportunities to use those barrels for big points up in the scoring zone below Kong). So, you need to be gaining more points by "playing from the bottom" than the opportunity cost of forgoing more time in the scoring zone below Kong. Remember, if you could have gotten even one additional double group and rejump due to arriving at the scoring zone 5 or 6 Bonus seconds earlier -- that's 400 points gone that I could have had by just racing to the top. If MULTIPLE rejumps could have occurred, now we're definitely talking about a potential waste of points. On the flip side, the simple act of chasing that triple down to the 2nd girder and rejumping it (assuming no additional delays or lost barrels) gains 500 points -- and often additional double or triple groups can now be formed en route to the scoring zone. I think moves like this -- if done aggressively and efficiently CAN and SHOULD yield an additional 200 - 300 points during this transition phase between the hammers above and beyond the opportunity cost (other top players disagree with this math and I'm open to debate about it). But it is very risky and difficult. Still, there are 51 barrel screens between Levels 5 - 21 and finding an extra 300 points per screen here could be the difference between hitting 1.2 million and just missing it.
Pies:
One thing I've been messing with just a bit lately is looking for opportunities to aggressively use the 2nd hammer in an offensive manner. Traditionally, what I've always felt about this hammer is that it's a good back up plan to use in a defensive way when necessary, but that it's not really very useful for point pressing. However, I've been rethinking that lately. Depending on the setup, if I can get to that hammer without delay while there are 3 or 4 fireballs in the immediate area, I think it may be worth point pressing with this hammer. Keep in mind that using up this hammer can be risky if you remain trapped in that section after it expires -- and I've already had a few deaths result from this -- but I think with the right balance we might have positive expectation to gain some decent points here with only moderate risk ... again, if the situation is favorable. This includes any situation where you expect to otherwise be delayed anyways. For example, if one of the five fireballs is clearly preventing a quick escape up the right side (after using the bottom hammer) and I'm clearly going to be standing around for a while on the left side waiting for an opening anyways, then why not stand around with the hammer in hand and try to smash a few fireballs? One of the best scenarios occurs when you use up all of the hammer time smashing fireballs and during this time, that 5th fireball on the right side made it's way to the top of the screen and you are able to jump to the middle section after the hammer expires and race up the right side -- this is big points when this happens (getting all 3 prizes along the way). Another possibility is if you recognize that only one fireball remains up above you and the others have drifted to the middle section -- now a good choice is to miss smashing the last fireball across the gap on purpose, leaving it in the middle section and try to quickly climb up the left side at the first opportunity -- again, this is risky if that last fireball comes down your ladder to your section and other fireballs are still lingering in the middle section -- that's the classic trap and is often fatal -- but in terms of Bonus efficiency it's much better to try ending the screen in that manner if that's the setup IMO.
Rivets:
I had been thinking more about the rivet screen recently and I think my latest couple of long games showed some good improvements in my rivet averages. Basically, I'm coming to the conclusion that in a surprisingly high percentage of situations, the top hammer is actually a waste of time and points. I think that when the setup is slightly bad and you feel there is a large chance that you will NOT be able to create an opportunity to taunt out the rest of the screen with at LEAST 2500 Bonus remaining (which creates a net gain of 1000 points), and you can find a way to quickly and aggressively finish out the screen while skipping the top hammer -- you are likely going to score MORE points doing it this way than you would have if you had gotten the top hammer. It's not very intuitive but it's becoming more and more clear to me that there are many situations where this is correct. Remember, holding the hammer in hand spews off 900 Bonus points, and based on how far out of the way you went to get it, it may be a cost of closer to 1100 - 1200 Bonus points to get the hammer WITHOUT ANY DELAY! Based on what we now know about fireball scoring probabilities, you'd need to make close to 3 smashes JUST to break even with the hammer time. Often times you won't even get enough smashes. But, MANY other times, you just run into BIG delays either trying to get to the hammer, or waiting near the hammer to try to set up better smashes, or even after the hammer expires while trying to finish out the screen -- often these seemingly minor delays will cost 1000 - 1500 Bonus points without even realizing it! IF, instead you had an immediate opportunity to clear the screen instead, take it. You'll probably score more points.
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How about a simple formula of beginning Level 5 with 130,000 points and then averaging 60,000 points per level for the rest of the game (something no one has ever done when not including points with lost men) -- that's just 1.15 million.
I was watching your 1,167,400 point game and counted up only 5100 points from your deaths. That means you were averaging ca. 60,111 per level not including death points. Or maybe you meant that nobody besides you has done it.
On another note... Do you still take every free pass in the pie factory on your way to 1.2m? I had been thinking about whether it might pay off to hang around a bit on the conveyer, given that the fireballs behave nicely, and wait for a good opportunity to grab the hammer instead of taking the free pass. Maybe it introduces to much risk in a long game and I guess you have probably put thought into it before
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Barrels - Just a few quick things. First, I feel I have a better bottom hammer that nets maybe an extra smash sometimes...along with it feels easier to me...if I run to the far right side of the screen, and steer all barrels down ladders by running left for the first few seconds of the hammer (even barrels rolling toward the far right ladders). I feel like it leaves you with more real estate to work with, and also removes some of the constant left-right-left-right movements required for steering barrels down ladders during a bottom hammer. More than anything, having more real estate between you and oncomming barrels is important. An extra couple inches of screen space can mean the difference between being able to do a quick right-left to steer down a barrel up top...or having to stand still and smash all the oncomming barrels...possibly missing an extra 300 points.
Second, the odd running left jump you can make to get 300 points off of one of the first rolling barrels that comes down, and a falling wild barrel. It's weird how often this happens...but its a net +200 points than if you just standing jump over the rolling barrel and ignore the wild.
Third, tapping the controller between barrel smashes. There are times when barrels are almost right on top of one another, and you usually stand still and just let the hammer do it's work...also to avoid letting a barrel sneak under the hammer if you were moving toward it. It sometimes nets an extra smash if you are looking up at barrels that are right on top of a ladder. You can tap the controller between barrel smashes and get barrels to steer down. It only takes the slightest tap. I believe this can even be done if barrels are right on top of one another. Obviously, you don't have time to do this if Mario has his back to the barrel...the barrel must be in front or Mario (also another reason to start off your bottom hammer by running right...then continuing left...more real estate...more ladders mario is facing and can control barrels with by moving in one direction).
Pies - Totally agree with your analysis. Huge points lie within extra fireball smashes...and when you're going for 1.2M, obviously you need to take the risk and get any extra points you can. With a little luck, you can net an additional 900-1000 points...or more, by grabbing the left hammer. Since fireballs respawn immediately after being smashed, and run towards you after they respawn...you can net 4-5 smashes sometimes with the left hammer.
Rivets - I agree and always look for an opportunity to run up the right side, clear the 2nd to the top right rivet, jump back, and run up to clear the last rivet. Though it's somewhat rare, and normally you are grabbing that top hammer to smash firefoxes to have a safer route to clear the top right rivet...you can net more bonus timer points finishing the screen asap...than waiting around unnecessarially to always grab the top hammer. It's all too often that 1500 ticks off the bonus timer as you wait for a chance to grab the hammer, net 1-2 smashes, then run up and clear the screen. Unless both are 800 smashes, it wasn't worth it.
Though it rarely happens, I have died (probably due to being too agressive) trying to run up the right side and clear the last 2 rivets without taking the top hammer. An agressive fireball can shoot down one ladder from the very top, then immediately shoot down the next ladder and catch you off guard. It happens so fast sometimes, even if you think you are far enough away to get away safely...they can catch you. I think it's natural to be too agressive sometimes when you are trying to do this. With one fireball guarding the hammer, and probably 1-3 up top...it's a high stress situation that takes split second decision making. You have to be able to judge whether or not the fireball guarding the hammer can run over and get you as you clear the second to the top right rivet...and at the same time keep an eye on the fireballs at the very top to make sure none are in a position where they can run to the right and shoot down the ladder after you.
It should also be pointed out that the 'running up the right side' method is sometimes your only shot at clearing a rivet screen. Stubborn 'freezers' can make it impossible to climb the middle ladder...as they can freeze, climb down and freeze, climb back up and freeze again...and keep repeating this over and over until you're out of time. It's beneficial to be able to understand when 'running up the right side' is the way to go.
(obviously a lot of this stuff is not important for a player like me who is only going for 1M currently, but just wanted to add to the discussion)
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How about a simple formula of beginning Level 5 with 130,000 points and then averaging 60,000 points per level for the rest of the game (something no one has ever done when not including points with lost men) -- that's just 1.15 million.
I was watching your 1,167,400 point game and counted up only 5100 points from your deaths. That means you were averaging ca. 60,111 per level not including death points. Or maybe you meant that nobody besides you has done it.
On another note... Do you still take every free pass in the pie factory on your way to 1.2m? I had been thinking about whether it might pay off to hang around a bit on the conveyer, given that the fireballs behave nicely, and wait for a good opportunity to grab the hammer instead of taking the free pass. Maybe it introduces to much risk in a long game and I guess you have probably put thought into it before
Hi Svavar, perhaps I never did a proper analysis of that game ... I can't seem to find my stats on it. I had thought my level averages on that one were around 59,000 but if you're right then that's my mistake. Anyways, what I meant by that post was that up until a year or two ago it was thought that getting your level averages up to where you can maintain 60,000 points per level throughout an entire game was a very difficult task that would require "maximum" point pressing for the whole game and is about the upper threshold that players could hope to achieve in the long run without an especially good run of luck during a game. And yet, this only brings the expected score up to around 1.15 million points until you begin to factor in points with lost men. So, trying to push beyond that pace to the point where a 1.2 million point game becomes legitimately within reach has been the focus and I feel like I have now made enough improvements to my pace that I have a decent shot at it.
And yes, I have thought a lot about when to take the free pass and when to press the screen for more points. I have actually been trending TOWARDS taking MORE free passes lately, as it is very rare to have a full game with pie factory averages above 8400 points. Skipping the free pass and trying for more points is VERY hit or miss and can become frustrating when you do a lot of risky stuff and then you look up and the screen yielded 7800 points or something and you know that you could have had an easy free pass. However, if I feel like there is a setup that should yield a lot of smashes with the bottom hammer, I will often go for it based on the possibility of having a big screen.
There are a few components that go into "beating the clock" on the Pies. The first is the number of smashes, and remember, smashing a pie tends to score slightly higher than smashing a fireball. The second is the number of prizes collected. Lastly, how much Bonus is conserved. For example, let's say that you do a reasonable job of finishing the screen with just some minor delays and manage to finish with 4000 Bonus. Well, when you think about it, that's 2800 lost Bonus points as compared to taking the free pass! That's a lot to make up. Now, depending on the route, perhaps an extra prize was grabbed along the way -- that's 800. But, now you need to make up an additional 2000 points with smashes -- which means you need nearly 5 smashes just to break even. It's really not that common to get significantly more than 5 smashes with the bottom hammer. So, at best we're talking about a lot of effort for small gains here. But, I still say that it's worth it if this scenario is likely. However, if we're too eager to press the screen, occasionally you get a very weak bottom hammer with only 1 or 2 smashes, or you can get into situations where you face more serious delays. Remember, if you look up at the end and see that you are finishing with 3000 Bonus or less, you almost certainly lost points as compared to the free pass (unless you happened to use both hammers very effectively, which is also rare). Anyways, it was a good question -- getting good at making that particular decision is one of the major keys to point pressing this game.
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Barrels - Just a few quick things. First, I feel I have a better bottom hammer that nets maybe an extra smash sometimes...along with it feels easier to me...if I run to the far right side of the screen, and steer all barrels down ladders by running left for the first few seconds of the hammer (even barrels rolling toward the far right ladders).
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Second, the odd running left jump you can make to get 300 points off of one of the first rolling barrels that comes down, and a falling wild barrel. It's weird how often this happens...but its a net +200 points than if you just standing jump over the rolling barrel and ignore the wild.
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Third, tapping the controller between barrel smashes.
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Pies - Totally agree with your analysis. Huge points lie within extra fireball smashes...and when you're going for 1.2M, obviously you need to take the risk and get any extra points you can. With a little luck, you can net an additional 900-1000 points...or more, by grabbing the left hammer. Since fireballs respawn immediately after being smashed, and run towards you after they respawn...you can net 4-5 smashes sometimes with the left hammer.
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Rivets - I agree and always look for an opportunity to run up the right side, clear the 2nd to the top right rivet, jump back, and run up to clear the last rivet.
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It should also be pointed out that the 'running up the right side' method is sometimes your only shot at clearing a rivet screen. Stubborn 'freezers' can make it impossible to climb the middle ladder...as they can freeze, climb down and freeze, climb back up and freeze again...and keep repeating this over and over until you're out of time. It's beneficial to be able to understand when 'running up the right side' is the way to go.
Hey Mike, good points. Yes, many players just don't understand proper positioning when using the bottom hammer on barrels. The further to the right you can keep yourself positioned throughout the process, the better your results will be. This is something I picked up early on from studying Ross's games when he was streaming a lot several years ago. He always made an effort to stay positioned about 3/4 of the way to the right side, where there is a large gap between ladders when looking up. If you just run to the left right away, you quickly pass beyond some of the ladders and you now must make decisions about which barrel to try to steer instead of being able to steer both at the same time with one motion. A lot of players also just feel that it's safer to make sure to get beyond the long ladder and steer barrels from the left side so that they are rolling away from you just in case the hammer runs out -- while there is some merit to this, the resulting lost points from being so conservative in this particular case is just disasterous. I watch players habitually get 7 - 8 smashes here instead of the 11 or so smashes that should be common and then leave themselves with a somewhat messy board to deal with after the hammer expires. Staying as far to the right as possible is the way to go.
I will say that in a long game I'll sometimes make an exception to this if I feel like it's advantageous to immediately chase down the fireball(s). My default is actually to leave the fireballs alone until the very end of the cycle, which is a much higher risk tactic than most other players are comfortable with, but based on the position of the fireball and the barrels I'll sometimes try to go for the fireball smash right away. If successful, I'll sometimes make a long run back to the right where I'm not really steering anything to get repositioned to make a lot of last minute barrel steers to clean up the screen. This method is a bit more complex and will sometimes result in 1 - 2 missed barrel smashes, but often times getting two or even just one fireball smash in lieu of these barrels is actually profitable. Remember, fireball smashes are worth more points than barrel smashes. But also, if the fireball climbs up before being smashed and then causes significant delays and missed barrels, then these losses are often more costly than what may have been gained by getting 1 - 2 extra barrel smashes. Again, for me a lot of this decision has to do with the fireball position and what else is going on with the screen as I feel that I can often miss the fireball and still proceed with the transition with mimimal delays (which would be profitable). This is another one of those decisions that getting better at it will yield more effective point pressing.
Yeah, leeching the wild barrels in combo with rolling barrels while waiting around on the 2nd girder is a good technique to add. Again, I remember seeing Ross have some success with this a long time ago and decided to begin trying it myself and it has been useful.
I agree, I do a LOT of "tapping" between barrel smashes. I am constantly making lots of little adjustments and inputs that are probably hard to see just by watching my games. More inputs = more steering.
With regards to the 2nd hammer on the Pies, you need to be cautious about overusing it. When you really look at it, it's actually pretty amazing how often you can grab that 2nd hammer and it leads to a net loss of points. Remember, 900 Bonus ticks off the clock while holding the hammer and if you cause yourself a lot of extra delays after the hammer expires because of all of the fireballs respawing above you, you could be looking at a big loss of Bonus even when you are able to rack up several smashes. I DO believe that there are opportunities to use this hammer aggressively for extra points, but this might only be feasible 3 - 4 times in a full game, for example. The other times the hammer should serve as a defensive back up plan if you are trapped.
Yes, I agree about the rivets -- I have been looking for more opportunities to "run up the right side" and finish the screen lately. I think that overall this is a net gain of points for me as my rivet averages have always been lacking and I've been looking for ways to boost it. Since becoming less worried about always using the top hammer and sometimes just finishing the screen efficiently, my rivet averages have been on the rise. It's counter intuitive since you can never get a "BIG" screen by completing it in this manner, but you CAN often avoid the disasterous screens this way. Clock delays are serious pace killers on Pies, Elevators and Rivets and finding tactics to eliminate them is a good way to boost scores.
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Hi Svavar, perhaps I never did a proper analysis of that game ... I can't seem to find my stats on it.
No cause for concern, Dean. You won't have to do a proper analysis, unless you're interested in tracking the results of your blue barrel, fireball, and pie smashes. Your 1,167,400 game is on my DK summary "to do" list, along with Jeff's 1.107m (MAME) and Vincent's 1.135m (arcade) accomplishments.
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Dean,
Thanks for creating your blog. Being able to watch your stream over the last year or so has helped me improve my game tremendously.
I was wondering if you touch base a bit on spring stage strategy? More specifically tips for "free-styling" the springs?
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Awesome advice Dean and Mike about the 3/4 rule for the bottom hammer. This little change in my game has helped. I use to shoot for the safe just left of the ladder and am now steering better then before!
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Hey Dean, I learned a few things about pie factory recently that you may not have know already. Firstly, I'm sure you are familiar with the situation on pie factory where the first pie of the screen spawns on the bottom conveyor so that it goes just off the left side of the screen as the conveyor reverses direction and sometimes it comes back but other times it stays off screen. I often delay smashing this pie when I grab the bottom hammer in favour of smashing other stuff first, hoping that the pie will come back on screen and I still get the smash. Well it turns out that the pie actually always goes off screen and despawns and is sometimes replaced by a different pie, which makes it look like the same pie came back, but you are actually missing out on a smash if you let the pie go off screen. This means that you always need to make smashing this pie a priority before it goes off screen. If the second pie to spawn also spawns on the bottom and you leach it three times before grabbing the bottom hammer you will never be able to reach the first pie on time before it goes off screen. Even if you leach the second pie only twice you need to make sure to grab the bottom hammer as early as possible on the second jump or else you won't make it to the first pie on time. You can tell if you made it on time based on whether you end up with two successive smashes or just one.
The second thing I learned has to do with the direction of the upper conveyor. You've probably noticed that the upper conveyors can sometimes move in the outwards direction when you are in the lower part of the screen but will always change to moving inwards as soon as you make it slightly above the bottom conveyor. What's interesting about this is that as long as the upper conveyor is moving outwards, no pies can spawn up there and instead all pies will spawn on the bottom conveyor, which means more smashes. You can actually use this to guarantee yourself a strong bottom hammer. How it works is that the screen starts out with the upper conveyor moving inwards, which means pies can spawn both on top and on the bottom. Then partway through the screen it will reverse direction (assuming you don't rise above the bottom conveyor). If you grab the bottom hammer after it reverses direction then the jump will raise Mario above the bottom conveyor causing the upper conveyor to immediately switch back to moving inwards, which is bad and you will likely get a weak bottom hammer. However, if you grab the hammer just before it starts moving outwards then as soon as you land it will reverse to moving outwards you will be guaranteed a strong bottom hammer.
In practice when you go for the bottom hammer you often leach one of the early pies two or three times before grabbing the hammer, which usually results in the hammer being grabbed at just the right time. However, if nothing is available to leach before getting the bottom hammer then it's easy to actually grab the hammer too late. A good reference point for this case I found is to jump as kong is moving left just before Kong's left foot reaches the middle ladder of the three ladders up top. So when the free pass is unavailable and no pies are on screen it's actually best to grab the bottom hammer according to this reference point rather than waiting around for fireballs to come down. By grabbing the bottom hammer at the right time you can guarantee three pie smashes (and a possible 4th if your lucky) in addition to any pies that are already on screen plus any fireball smashes you get. I think this means that it is best to go for the bottom hammer even if there is initially only one pie on the bottom conveyor, however if there are no pies on the bottom to start out with then it is probably still best to take the free pass. I haven't really played much recently to try this out in a game and see how it affects pie factory averages but during the testing I did from a pie factory savestate I seemed to be scoring really well. I think this in combination with the the first thing I mentioned could significantly improve pie factory averages.
If you want to play around with this stuff for yourself in mame with RAM watch then 0x62A2 is the address of the direction reverse counter for the upper conveyor, it reverses when this reaches 0. Also, note that this counter freezes when Mario is slightly above the bottom conveyor (including when he jumps off of it). 0x62A3 indicates the direction of the upper conveyor, 01 means outwards and FF means inwards. If after grabbing the bottom hammer this value is FF then you didn't grab the bottom hammer at the right time.
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That's some good info, Jeff. I just experimented with your recommendation, using a Level 5 save state (with no pie leeching), and managed to score 12,100 on my 2nd attempt.
There was some discussion last week in the Donkey Kong X-Files (https://donkeykongforum.net/index.php?topic=147.msg4487#msg4487) thread regarding the upper conveyors. I was fooling around on that stage, trying to determine the height that cancels the "outward" direction. As far as I can tell, it's when the vertical position of Jumpman's foot is somewhere between the 2nd and 3rd rungs on the ladder leading up from the bottom conveyor.
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This thing about the upper-conveyor direction is blowing my mind.
I'd never noticed or even thought about it before.
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This thing about the upper-conveyor direction is blowing my mind.
I'd never noticed or even thought about it before.
+1
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About increasing points on conveyors, it would be cool to find a way of using the middle hammer giving that they respawn on the same side. As long as you can get safe to the hammer with about 3 fireballs on that side, and maybe get abotu 5 hits. Hard to find the best time to go for it though.
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Yea, this is very interesting/significant stuff. As long there are people trying to break the WR, and people keep playing this game...you have to think that at some point all of these 'little things' will have to come into play in order to break a potential WR that pushes the high score close to 1.2M...or beyond.
It's crazy to think that in the future the WR may be decided by accidentally grabbing the bottom PF hammer at the wrong time...causing you to miss a couple smashes.
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The second thing I learned has to do with the direction of the upper conveyor. You've probably noticed that the upper conveyors can sometimes move in the outwards direction when you are in the lower part of the screen but will always change to moving inwards as soon as you make it slightly above the bottom conveyor. What's interesting about this is that as long as the upper conveyor is moving outwards, no pies can spawn up there and instead all pies will spawn on the bottom conveyor, which means more smashes. You can actually use this to guarantee yourself a strong bottom hammer. How it works is that the screen starts out with the upper conveyor moving inwards, which means pies can spawn both on top and on the bottom. Then partway through the screen it will reverse direction (assuming you don't rise above the bottom conveyor). If you grab the bottom hammer after it reverses direction then the jump will raise Mario above the bottom conveyor causing the upper conveyor to immediately switch back to moving inwards, which is bad and you will likely get a weak bottom hammer. However, if you grab the hammer just before it starts moving outwards then as soon as you land it will reverse to moving outwards you will be guaranteed a strong bottom hammer.
In practice when you go for the bottom hammer you often leach one of the early pies two or three times before grabbing the hammer, which usually results in the hammer being grabbed at just the right time. However, if nothing is available to leach before getting the bottom hammer then it's easy to actually grab the hammer too late. A good reference point for this case I found is to jump as kong is moving left just before Kong's left foot reaches the middle ladder of the three ladders up top. So when the free pass is unavailable and no pies are on screen it's actually best to grab the bottom hammer according to this reference point rather than waiting around for fireballs to come down. By grabbing the bottom hammer at the right time you can guarantee three pie smashes (and a possible 4th if your lucky) in addition to any pies that are already on screen plus any fireball smashes you get. I think this means that it is best to go for the bottom hammer even if there is initially only one pie on the bottom conveyor, however if there are no pies on the bottom to start out with then it is probably still best to take the free pass. I haven't really played much recently to try this out in a game and see how it affects pie factory averages but during the testing I did from a pie factory savestate I seemed to be scoring really well. I think this in combination with the the first thing I mentioned could significantly improve pie factory averages.
Hey Jeff, sorry it took me so long to respond. This is an excellent observation and one that I had never really looked at before. I played around on a pie factory stage very briefly today to just confirm some of the basics, including the "reference point" for the first direction change of the upper conveyor, and it seems to match your description.
So, to be clear, are you saying that you believe that a pie is "always" released onto the screen according to a regular periodic interval (assuming there are not already 6 pies on the screen)? So, it's just a matter of whether it spawns on the top or on the bottom, but it will always spawn? I had never really noticed this before but now it seems like it might be the case -- if it is, then certainly having the upper conveyors moving outwards while you hold the bottom hammer WOULD guarantee more pies being spawned on the bottom conveyor for more smash points since there is nowhere else for them to spawn while the upper conveyor is moving outwards and they must always spawn somewhere (right?).
Also, do you happen to know the timeframe for how long the upper conveyor will continue to move outwards, assuming you do not trigger it to change with your vertical position? It seemed to last about a half-cycle -- meaning, about half as long as the bottom conveyor remains moving in one direction -- about the length of time it takes Kong to move across the screen in one direction -- about half of a hammer cycle. So, towards the end of the hammer cycle, pies COULD be spawning up top again, but, like you said if you are lucky they would continue to spawn on the bottom for some extra smashes.
What's interesting about this is that it goes against the adjustment that I had been making recently which is to delay my hammer grab until Kong is almost all the way to the left -- in order to maximize the amount of time with the hammer in hand where pies would be spawning towards me. In other words, if there are no pies already on the screen, grabbing the hammer when Kong is in the middle of the screen wastes 1/4 of the hammer cycle while waiting for the bottom conveyor to change directions. By delaying this until I was only wasting perhaps 1/8 of the hammer cycle, I found that I might have a shot at an extra smash on the back end of that cycle whereas doing it the other way, the hammer would have already expired. And yet, I've been finding that this tends to interfere with the rapid escape up the right side (ending with around 5700 on the clock) since I've delayed the whole thing by just enough time to cause the upper right ladder to decend by the time I get there. So, now, there is yet another factor to consider and perhaps I'll go back to the old way of grabbing the hammer when Kong is in the middle of the screen.
The topic of whether or not to take the free pass could be a whole seperate discussion, but you're right that this new information should play a role in tweaking that decision as well. This is great stuff though, and it will take some thought to figure out how this might affect optimum point pressing strategy.
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So, to be clear, are you saying that you believe that a pie is "always" released onto the screen according to a regular periodic interval (assuming there are not already 6 pies on the screen)? So, it's just a matter of whether it spawns on the top or on the bottom, but it will always spawn? I had never really noticed this before but now it seems like it might be the case -- if it is, then certainly having the upper conveyors moving outwards while you hold the bottom hammer WOULD guarantee more pies being spawned on the bottom conveyor for more smash points since there is nowhere else for them to spawn while the upper conveyor is moving outwards and they must always spawn somewhere (right?).
Yes, I think the pies are always released according to a regular interval. 0x639B is the pie deployment counter. A pie is deployed every time this reaches 0. And yes, as far as I can tell pies are guaranteed to spawn on the bottom when the top conveyor is moving outwards so you will always get smashes.
Also, do you happen to know the timeframe for how long the upper conveyor will continue to move outwards, assuming you do not trigger it to change with your vertical position? It seemed to last about a half-cycle -- meaning, about half as long as the bottom conveyor remains moving in one direction -- about the length of time it takes Kong to move across the screen in one direction -- about half of a hammer cycle. So, towards the end of the hammer cycle, pies COULD be spawning up top again, but, like you said if you are lucky they would continue to spawn on the bottom for some extra smashes.
I think it's more like 3/4 of a cycle. I know that if you grab the hammer immediately before the first time it starts moving outwards, then the cycle lasts long enough to guarantee that three pies will spawn on the bottom left that you can smash. By the time the 4th pie is ready to spawn the top conveyor will have reversed direction again so the final pie won't be a guaranteed smash.
Also, because we were talking about this in your stream, when the code decides whether to spawn the pie on top or on bottom it compares a random 2-digit hex number to 0x60 (96 in decimal) and if it is less than that the pie spawns on the bottom. So this would mean that the probability that it spawns on the bottom is 96/256 = 0.375
If it decides to spawn on top the it decides between left side and right side by comparing a new random 2-digit hex number to 0x68 (104 in decimal). If it's less than that it spawns on the right so the probability of spawning on the right is 104/256 = 0.40625.
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Also, because we were talking about this in your stream, when the code decides whether to spawn the pie on top or on bottom it compares a random 2-digit hex number to 0x60 (96 in decimal) and if it is less than that the pie spawns on the bottom. So this would mean that the probability that it spawns on the bottom is 96/256 = 0.375
If it decides to spawn on top the it decides between left side and right side by comparing a new random 2-digit hex number to 0x68 (104 in decimal). If it's less than that it spawns on the right so the probability of spawning on the right is 104/256 = 0.40625.
Great Scott! These findings are revolutionary!
Back to the drawing board, we may each have to do some serious re-calibrating of our general pie factory risk/reward-intuitions.
What does the code say about the chances of a fireball spawning from the oil can to the left or the right? Are the probabilities exactly equal? Thanks for looking into this stuff, Jeff!
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Great Scott! These findings are revolutionary!
Back to the drawing board, we may each have to do some serious re-calibrating of our general pie factory risk/reward-intuitions.
What does the code say about the chances of a fireball spawning from the oil can to the left or the right? Are the probabilities exactly equal? Thanks for looking into this stuff, Jeff!
It's the same side of the screen as Mario. Mitch, you obviously know that already, so perhaps I misinterpreted your question?
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Oh, duh! Haha, I was so caught up in the amazing new statistics Jeff found, that I forgot one of the most fundamental aspects of the pie factory! :P I obviously haven't played DK in a while....
LOL. That's too funny!
Edit: But now that I think about it, if Jumpman were exactly on the same horizontal pixel as the oil can, what would happen? This situation would be very hard to set up (you'd have to be on the lower conveyor with the hammer, if this situation were to ever happen), and it doesn't really matter in practice, but I'm just curious. Is their a default side?
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Edit: But now that I think about it, if Jumpman were exactly on the same horizontal pixel as the oil can, what would happen? This situation would be very hard to set up (you'd have to be on the lower conveyor with the hammer, if this situation were to ever happen), and it doesn't really matter in practice, but I'm just curious. Is their a default side?
That question is probably best answered through an examination of the code.
Without looking, my best guess would be "tie goes to the right side." :-\
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Tie goes to the right, Mitch. Have you even played this game before?
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Haha, I'm kinda regretting even having posted these questions in this blog. I've gone like 4 days straight with only 3 hrs of sleep a night cuz of watching Ben play for the DK3 bounty, so I'm guessing my brain isn't working as well as I've been thinking it is. :P
But, are you serious about the 'tie goes to the right thing'? It seems like it would be tough to know when you are exactly in the middle to be able to test this empirically.
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Don't Pauline control the fireball spawning actually? Take the rivets if you climb up the bottom middle ladder fireballs spawn right because Pauline turns that way. Climbing the upper middle ladder fireballs will spawn left because Pauline faces that way. I can't remember right off hand but either they spawn away from the way Pauline faces or spawn toawards where she's facing.
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They always spawn to the right on rivets when you are climbing either of the middle ladders, because the ladders are a little off-set to the left of the center.
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Yeah that's right my bad. I too am on Los! Lack of sleep.
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Haha, I'm kinda regretting even having posted these questions in this blog. I've gone like 4 days straight with only 3 hrs of sleep a night cuz of watching Ben play for the DK3 bounty, so I'm guessing my brain isn't working as well as I've been thinking it is. :P
Ha, no dude you're fine.
But, are you serious about the 'tie goes to the right thing'? It seems like it would be tough to know when you are exactly in the middle to be able to test this empirically.
Here's a mind blower: what if it's actually impossible to be in the middle because there is an odd number of pixels making up the width of the playing field and an even number of pixels making up Jumpman, or vice-versa.
They always spawn to the right on rivets when you are climbing either of the middle ladders, because the ladders are a little off-set to the left of the center.
I did not know that.
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Weird wild stuff!
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Von. That's why you can get a little to the Right of the ladder and it will still spawn to the right. I learned that for making the grab on the first prize.
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Also, do you happen to know the timeframe for how long the upper conveyor will continue to move outwards, assuming you do not trigger it to change with your vertical position? It seemed to last about a half-cycle
I think it's more like 3/4 of a cycle.
...
So this would mean that the probability that it spawns on the bottom is 96/256 = 0.375
Hey Jeff, hopefully you're still following these threads. I've been thinking more about this whole thing and I'm still not sure if I'm convinced. One of these days I'll have to mess around with the MAME debugger and try to get some more concrete values for some things to make the math a bit more concrete -- unless you or somebody else already knows some of this stuff, that would be helpful!
First, your figure of 3/4 of a cycle for outward moving upper conveyors sounds like a ballpark estimate (although probably a pretty good one). I wonder if anyone knows this value more accurately? We could probably break it down into frames. We know that a bottom conveyor cycle, and a hammer cycle lasts 9 BONUS seconds on Level 4+, each of which ticks down after a certain number of frames. So, one cycle = some number of frames (it would be nice to know this number). The amount of time that the upper conveyors can move outward is some other number of frames -- if we knew these we could calculate an exact ratio.
[EDIT: Ok, in the middle of writing this up, I decided to watch a pie factory screen. The estimate of 3/4 of a cycle appears to be VERY accurate. In both directions. Meaning, the upper conveyor will switch from moving inwards to outwards after 3/4 of a cycle AND it will switch from moving outwards to inwards after 3/4 of a cycle. If you just stand at the bottom and watch, you can see the first switch happens with Kong is in the middle moving left, the second reversal is when he is positioned at the right edge of the screen, the third reversal is when he is in the middle moving right, and the next is when he is positioned at the left edge of the screen (3 full cycles). ]
[EDIT: I double checked another source -- verified that the upper conveyor cycle is exactly 3/4 of the bottom conveyor cycle. ]
Also, it sounds like outward moving conveyors can be triggered to immediately reverse and move inwards, but the reverse is not true -- you cannot trigger conveyors to move outwards -- it just happens after Jumpman is below the vertical threshold for a certain number of frames (this is an assumption, and may not be accurate) -- so, does this mean that the switch to moving outward is based on relative or absolute timing? For example, if Jumpman never breaks the threshold while the conveyor is moving outwards, then it will likely switch back and forth between inwards and outwards at some default point (which could be predicted by watching the Timer), but if this cycle is broken by Jumpman breaking the threshold ... how is it handled? Does it now reverse and travel inwards for the "full" period of time that it normally would (which would mean that it's next reversal outwards occurs at a non-default time on the Timer), or does it just finish up some fraction of its cycle and then reverses outwards again according to its default time on the Timer? ... If I had to guess, I would think that once it gets triggered to change from outward to inward, it is forced to remain moving inward for a set period of time. Then, it will periodically check Jumpman's vertical position to determine whether or not to switch to moving outwards (but this periodic check isn't particularly often -- NOTE that you don't usually see it switch from inward to outwards immediately after jumpman moves down below the threshold.)
[EDIT: Did some poking around and I'm fairly certain now that this direction change occurs only with absolute timing. Meaning, after another 3/4 of a cycle goes by, it will check to see if the direction can be reversed, and if so, it reverses (in either direction). Note that this means if it's normally going inward for the first 3/4, then outward for the next 3/4 and then inward again for the next 3/4 -- if Jumpman "triggers" a reversal during the second cycle so that it immediately switches from outward to inward, this means that on the 3rd 3/4 it will now switch to outward (despite the fact that with no triggers it would normally be switching from outward to inward). ]
The next fact that would be nice to know now is the rate of pie deployment...
[EDIT: Ok, for what it's worth, I "THINK" that a pie is deployed once every 124 frames and a full cycle is 512 frames (upper conveyor cycle is 384 frames). However, I think there's an offset with the pies where they wait until the initial fireballs are all spawned before pies come out -- so, depending on where you are in this 124 count when the upper conveyor reverses, I'm not sure that you are (always) guaranteed the 3rd pie -- some confirmation on these numbers would be useful! ]
Anyways, getting back to our "normal", or "best case" scenario for pressing the screen by getting the bottom hammer without delay. Let's assume that there's no pie to "chase down" with our hammer as the conveyor moves from right to left. The two obvious choices are:
1) Grab the hammer with just a bit more than 1/4 of a cycle remaining -- this allows the upper conveyor to reverse to an outward direction just after the hammer is grabbed. This lasts for 3/4 of a cycle. HOWEVER, for the first 1/4 of a cycle you are simply waiting around doing nothing while waiting for the bottom conveyor to reverse! Once it reverses, you are guaranteed some pie smashes for the next 1/2 cycle (how many smashes is this, I think it's still open to debate...). Then, during the last 1/4 cycle, you "might" get more smashes depending on whether or not the pie(s) spawn at the bottom, with a probability of 3/8.
OR:
2) Grab the hammer with just a bit more than 0/4 of a cycle remaining. The bottom conveyor almost immediately reverses direction, possibly yielding pies immediately. However, the upper conveyor, which already switched from inward to outward for the most recent 1/4 cycle, now immediately reverses back to inward. BUT, here's the thing -- I'm pretty certain that in this case, the upper conveyor remains moving inward for ONLY a 1/2 cycle! Because the reversal times are absolute -- so the 1/4 cycle that was already used up, plus the next half cycle, means that it will reverse back to outward when the hammer is only HALF expired! So, you have your first 1/2 cycle where you are smashing pies with 3/8 probability followed by another 1/2 cycle where you are guaranteed smashes (again, how many this is is still open to debate). In theory, I believe it's possible to smash 5 pies that are moving left to right with this method (this does NOT include chasing down pies moving right to left).
Granted, some of these figures are probably slightly inaccurate since you would typically grab the hammer slightly before reversal -- and, I think the 3/4 cycle of the upper conveyor might have a very slight offset -- the second reversal doesn't seem to occur EXACTLY when Kong is at the rightmost point of the screen, but a small fraction afterwards -- so some of this is thrown off slightly. Lastly, there is the issue of being somewhat behind and out of position after the hammer expires when using option 2 so that it's impossible to maxamize smashes AND make a right side escape for 5700 Bonus -- instead you will often end up getting caught on the retractable ladder and ending up with 5100 - 5200 Bonus. However, I think the point that I'm trying to make is that after Jeff first posted his observations, it seemed like option 1 had a clear advantage -- and now I'm not convinced. I think it might turn out to be a wash ... which would be good -- it would give the player more flexibility to play the situation based on risk and on fireball behavior rather than based on will happen with the pies. If anyone is able to make any of these observations more concrete, feel free to post your thoughts.
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Ok, I checked and here are the exact numbers:
The very top conveyor (dk's conveyor) reverses direction exactly once every 256 frames, so it takes dk 512 frames to travel back and forth once.
The middle conveyor reverses exactly once every 384 frames.
The bottom conveyor reverses exactly once every 510 frames (interestingly, it's slightly less than the time it takes dk to travel back and forth once).
A pie is deployed exactly once every 125 frames.
When the middle conveyor is moving outwards and Mario jumps it forces the conveyor to reverse direction, but it does not change the direction reverse counter (although the counter will be frozen while Mario is above the vertical threshold). So it won't take the full amount of time for it to reverse back to moving outwards, because the timer is starting from where it was before Mario forced the direction to switch. Note that it won't always reverse direction at the exact same absolute points because when Mario jumps off of the bottom conveyor the direction reverse timer gets frozen while Mario is above the vertical threshold so it lengthens the time until the next direction reversal.
When jumpman moves back below the vertical threshold after spending a lot of time above the threshold, the middle conveyor does not reverse direction immediately because you still have to wait for the direction reverse counter to reach 0, from whatever value it was frozen at while jumpman was above the threshold.
So, because the middle conveyor cycle is 384 frames and a pie is release every 125 frames and 384/125 = 3.072, it is impossible to have less than 3 pies spawn while the middle conveyor is moving outwards. In fact, if the timing worked out just right it would be possible for 4 pies to spawn while the middle conveyor was moving outwards. So yes, you are always guaranteed 3 pies will spawn on the bottom for you to smash if you are carrying the hammer for the entire duration that the middle conveyor is moving outwards.
I think you might be right about the first pie being delayed until the first fire appears. I might have seen something like this when I looked at the code but I don't remember.
So now looking at the two options for the situation you described, since there are no pies on screen, you can only possibly smash pies that come on the left side of the screen while the bottom conveyor is moving right. The bottom conveyor moves right for 510 frames and 510/125 = 4.08, so you are guaranteed that 4 pies will have the opportunity to spawn while it's moving left. Also, I think the timing works out that you actually have the opportunity to smash 5 pies, however, in the test I did it is EXTREMELY close and the 5th pie opportunity comes about 1 or 2 frames before the bottom conveyor reversed direction. So actually, depending on how much the first pie is delayed by you may not get the opportunity for 5 pie smashes. I should probably look into how variable the delay of the first pie is, because it seems like this is now important.
For now, I'll consider both the case where you have 4 pie opportunities and the case where you have 5 pie opportunities. In the first case with 4 pie opportunities, using option 1) you are able to exploit all 4 opportunities, the hammer ends immediately after the 4th opportunity. Not only that but the first 3 opportunities are guaranteed smashes and the 4th opportunity has a 3/8 probability of being a smash. So the total expected score from pie smashes is 525*3 + (3/8)*525 = 1772. In this case option 1) is far superior to option 2) because although option 2) is holding the hammer for a longer period while the bottom conveyor is moving left, it still only gets 4 smash opportunities, of which only the last one is guaranteed to be a smash.
In the case where the timing works out and you have 5 pie smash opportunities (which is what happened in the test I did), then the expected score from pie smashes in option 1) remains the same at 1772. However, option 2 now exploits the additional opportunity, which also happens to be a guaranteed smash because the middle conveyor will be moving outwards. So now, option 2) has three potential smashes followed by 2 guaranteed smashes with the expected score from pie smashes being 3*(3/8)*525 + 2*525 = 1641, which is still inferior to option 1). Considering the fact that option 1) gives you a significant head start towards finishing the screen puts option 1) even more in the lead over option 2). Now add to that the fact that the most likely smash to miss is the final smash, because it requires being right up against the left edge of the screen in both options (often missed due to moving right in order to smash fireballs), and in option 1) missing the final smash is no big deal because it's only worth (3/8)*525 = 197, but in option 2) missing the final smash is a huge blow of 525 points.
So from this analysis it seems to me like option 1) is far superior to option 2).
Here are some RAM values:
0x639B - pie deployment counter, a pie is deployed every time this reaches 0
0x62A0 - top conveyor direction reverse counter
0x62A1 - top conveyor direction (01 = right, FF = left)
0x62A2 - middle conveyor direction reverse counter
0x62A3 - middle conveyor direction (01 = outwards, FF = inwards)
0x62A5 - bottom conveyor direction reverse counter
0x62A6 - bottom conveyor direction (01 = right, FF = left)
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So, on an actual blog-related topic, I just had one of those one in a million opportunities come up and obviously I completely duffed it.
I was at the tail end of a complete fail session and just constantly dying on 1-1 over and over and over again when all of a sudden I put together a really big start to the board AND got FOUR 800 point smashes with the bottom hammer at the same time. The odds of getting the four 800 point smashes I'm estimating at around 1-in-1372. ( (1/7) * (1/7) * (1/7) * (1/4) ) Getting the type of start I got to the round is pretty rare too, maybe 1-in-100 at best and that doesn't include the fireballs climbing up into play at the exact right moment and the barrels steering fairly well with the bottom hammer. Needless to say this chance doesn't come around very often and I'm pretty bummed right now that I blew it -- this could have been a HIGH 14k 1-1 screen if things went well and at least 14,000 even if things just went below average.
Here's the inp. The death is pretty epic.
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yeah man that was an absolutely insane 1-1 start. wouldve been easily 11k+ before the top hammer and 14k+ finish. i wouldve loved to see you complete that board :(
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Nice start with that bottom hammer. Hate to see someone die like that in such a case as that. Rare things do happen that way. That is how I got my best 1-1 score, just had those lucky 500-800 smashes. Once I actually smashed three fireballs in a row on the barrel board, without barrels in between. Now that is odd. Has anyone ever done 4 in a row?
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I did that just the other day, Corey! 3 fireballs and 1 blue barrel; in that order.
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I felt special there for a moment.... and then it went away. :'(
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No, that is actually very rare... I realized this fact when it happened to me the other day, so you're still special! :D
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So, I had another decent game today while streaming. If anyone cares to check out the archive and put together some stats or to just watch the game it should be there for a week or so before getting erased.
This one featured a Level 4 death, which I've been playing out more and more often if I feel like the score is good. I didn't die again until Level 12, just a dumb situation where I chased after a group of barrels with the hammer and it ran out on me at the last second, I thought I had enough time but I didn't. The last two deaths were pretty big screwings on the same Level 16 Pie Factory screen which is a shame because I was still feeling pretty good and I was pretty confident that I would have ended that game with over 1.2 million points. Bummer -- I've had a handful of these sorts of close calls in the 800k+ range now so it seems like it's just a matter of time now.
I had several really big levels towards the first half of the game which is encouraging -- it's nice to be able to string together a few 64k+ Levels because it really allows for somewhat of a buffer now where I feel like I could still get to 1.2 million without perfect deaths, which wasn't the case not too long ago. In this game, by the end of Level 14, I was already above the mark (780k) needed to be able to hit 1.2 million with just 60k / level to finish the game AND I still had an extra man. So, at this point, I had a legitimate shot at around 1,230,000 if everything went perfectly, although I suspect (especially after suffering a really poor Level 15) that a more likely final score after some fatigue and an unintentional death would have been in the 1,200,000 - 1,210,000 range.
With a few games like this under my belt, it's beginning to feel just slightly less urgent to try for a perfect start. I wonder if I was aiming for 132,000 - 135,000 instead of 137,000 - 140,000 if I could withstand those lost points and still have a comfortable chance to reach 1.2 million -- and if so, how much would my start success rate improve and would that improve my overall chances to hit my goal due to more longer games played? Something to think about . . .
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I saw the game Dean, it was a good game. Those fireballs were brutal on that last Pie Factory. :'(
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So, I had another decent game today while streaming. If anyone cares to check out the archive and put together some stats or to just watch the game it should be there for a week or so before getting erased.
Hey Dean, any chance of attaching the INP here, if you still have it? I missed the live session, but would like to watch the game in its entirety, and also generate a game summary for the DK library. The only problem is, I doubt I'll get to it before the Twitch video is gone forever.
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Sorry Scott, I don't normally save inps for that sort of game. It had already been overwritten by the time I saw that you had asked for it. Hopefully it's still in the Twitch archive!
. . . . . . . .
Meanwhile, I put together another strong game earlier this afternoon. See attached inp for this game. I'm quite pleased that these deep runs are starting to come together consistantly now with a very high pace. In fact, the game today may have had better raw pace up through the half way point in the game than any other that I can remember -- and it wasn't feeling like a struggle. I definitely felt like I was somewhat "in the zone" for that portion of the game today, combined with above average luck with fireball behavior, which yielded some level totals that even I was surprised about. I'm having sort of a hard time understanding just where this new found pace is coming from -- I've actually been exceeding what I've been aiming for in a handful of games lately. Hey, I'm not complaining, I just hope it continues!
As an example of what I'm talking about, I went back and quickly compiled the scores after each screen and computed the Level totals and again I'm pleasantly surprised with the results. Here's how the game played out:
9800
22800
End of 1: 22800
33900
41300
53500
End of 2: 53500
(58300) 71300
79700
88600
99700
End of 3 (with 1 death): 99700
113800
122100
134900
142500
150200
End of 4 (with 1 death): 150200
163700
172000
185500
192700
204900
213700
Level 5: 63500
226500
235700
248500
255600
(258400) 270400
278500
Level 6 (not including death points): 62000
290900
299300
312100
320300
332900
339300
Level 7: 60800
350900
362200
374800
382200
397500
408500
Level 8: 69200
423000
433600
446300
454000
467200
475000
Level 9: 66500
486800
495200
507800
515500
528900
537000
Level 10: 62000
550700
557700
(562600) 577000
584400
597700
604800
Level 11 (not including death points): 62900
616800
626200
638300
645800
658900
665300
Level 12: 60500
677900
686200
698300
706000
718400
725400
Level 13: 60100
736500
744800
758900
766100
776800
784700
Level 14: 59300
(790200)
Any time you get a 69,200 and a 66,500 back to back a good ways into a full game, things are going extremely well to say the least. I'm also very happy that I didn't fall below 60k on any level until level 14 (which was 59300).
Unfortunately for me, this was one of those sessions (which happens a lot for me) where I really didn't quite have time to play a full game and was trying to squeeze it in -- then, of course it took me over an hour to get a start. So, at around the beginning of Level 11, I began having major distractions which caused me to seriously consider aborting an excellent game and definitely adversely impacted my mental concentration resulting in an almost immediate 3rd death and then a general downturn in pace as I pretty much knew one way or the other I probably wouldn't be able to finish the game.
But, still a very positive result for me -- if I can keep getting deep into the game with this sort of pace it seems like finishing a game should be coming soon. We'll see!
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Level 8: 69200
Level 9: 66500
Fking gross.
This is getting absurd!
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Those numbers are mind boggling. Looks like you are going to shatter your record soon. Looking forward to seeing what you put up!
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Nice game, Dean! You'll be at 1.2m+ soon enough!
And people didn't believe Vince and me when we came out and said that we thought 1.265m might be the humanly-possible max...
If Dean doesn't get it, at least we know Rudy will. ;D
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I tuned it from LV 12 onwards that last man was probably the best I've seen Dean play. To score so highly and yet make it look so effortless is an amazing skill. I was gutted when that wild barrel finally got him as I thought he was going to the end.
Good luck on your next run.
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Sorry Scott, I don't normally save inps for that sort of game. It had already been overwritten by the time I saw that you had asked for it. Hopefully it's still in the Twitch archive!
No worries, Dean. I was able to watch the entire game before Twitch deleted the video.
The game summary has been compiled and posted:
DK Data Library of Memorable Games (https://donkeykongforum.net/index.php?topic=304.msg7333#msg7333)
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Hey Dean, I see that you're still having problems with your Twitch chat. I recently had issues getting my Twitch chat to load as well, but I was able to completely resolve the issue by clearing my cache.
I know you like to frequent disreputable porn sites that may be leaving tracking-cookie crumbs, so before you fire up your next Twitch session, try clearing your cache.
If clearing your cache does no good, then, if you want, you can give me a report of the problems and I can try and help get you all better.
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I've decided that I'm going to make some changes to my approach to the first three screens of the game. The idea is to try to drastically improve my success rate of reaching the first elevator screen while not giving a whole lot away in terms of points. My sessions over the past few months have become borderline useless because I just cannot get through the first three screens of the game. My success rate is currently likely to be WAY below 5% -- this just destroys sessions, especially when I try to squeeze in a game in a limited window of time.
I'd really like to get to the point where my success rate is over 25%. Setting aside AT LEAST half of the failures for unacceptable Level 1 rivet screens (average or below average randomness), this would require Herculean improvement on the barrel screens, ESPECIALLY 2-1 since the time screw is so much more severe when restarting on 2-1 than it is when restarting on 1-1. Getting anywhere near a 25% success rate is probably very unrealistic, but it's a good goal to keep in mind during this phase of each session.
For quite some time, I've defined my minimum benchmarks as follows:
1-1: 9,500 minimum (restart any score below this threshold)
1-2: 18,000 minimum (restart any score below this threshold)
20,000 "good score" minimum (for scores at or above this threshold, adjust my 2-1 strategy to play much safer, in an attempt to protect a good Level 1 score and move on with the game with a decent score.
2-1: No minimum threshold -- but play strategy ranges from "moderately aggressive" to "very aggressive" based on the Level 1 score.
This approach generally yields scores in the 29,500 - 32,500 range, with some outliers above or below this range.
The problem is, as my game has improved, I had been sliding further and further away from the "moderately aggressive" strategy on 2-1, regardless of my score. So, even when getting 22,000+ points on Level 1, for example, I would often tend to "go for it" and stay with the "very aggressive" strategy in an attempt to get a rare huge score going on these screens. So, my scoring range after 2-1 was actually climbing even higher. However, even though my skill has improved, this gradual change in mindset has severely hampered a large percentage of sessions, and many many sessions lately end without ever getting a game started. Even though I agree strongly with the concept of playing extra aggressively on early screens in order to try for big starts where the time tradeoff for restarting the game is relatively low, having lots of sessions run this bad means that things are clearly out of balance and the gains are no longer worth the time.
I'm now going to make some changes to my benchmarks and strategies in order to front load the risk a bit more and to hopefully improve my overall success rate, while hopefully giving up only a small amount of points.
My new benchmarks will be as follows:
1-1: 10,000 minimum (restart any score below this threshold)
1-2: 18,500 minimum (restart any score below this threshold)
20,500 "good score" minimum (for scores at or above this threshold, adjust my 2-1 strategy to play much safer, in an attempt to protect a good Level 1 score and move on with the game with a decent score.
2-1: No minimum threshold -- but play strategy ranges from "moderately aggressive" to "very aggressive" based on the Level 1 score.
The main difference here is that I will force myself to go back to using a safer strategy for any scores above my Level 1 "good score" minimum and that should lead to MUCH fewer 2-1 restarts and should bump up my overall success rate significantly. There will likely be a small drop in my average 2-1 score as a result, and I will never get the really big 2-1 scores with this strategy, but hopefully I'm giving up less than 1000 points with this change and I'll have much more productive sessions.
We'll see.
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Have you considered doing away with the Level 1-1 minimum requirement altogether, and evaluating your score upon completion of L01 instead? Sure, rivet screwings are a fact of life, and can quickly negate a strong barrel board. But it's also not that uncommon for a favorable rivet stage to bail out a weak 1-1 score. You'd only need 10k on the rivets to bring an 8500 on 1-1 back to the "acceptable" level. Maybe, just maybe, you'll salvage more starts than you anticipate.
Just offering a different point of view.
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we see you on twitch checking out DKF. if youre that bored then play some stocker!
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I'm with Stella a 9k 1-1 can turn into 19k after level 1. You don't lose much for trying.
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Dean, Jeff H, Jeremy and I, among others, did a little work on the collision detection used in DK. Here is a summary image for those who have not seen it yet, please note that this is not 100% fact, it is a best-guess, based on current knowledge and it may change in the future. I would like to note that this would not have been possible without the serious efforts of Dean, Jeff and Jeremy. The 2 objects must share a minimum of 1 pixel to register a collision. It checks for collision in the Y direction before the X direction. It was also noticed that fireballs and foxfires can change their "y-position" while maintaining a constant X-value; they can bounce up and down. Fireballs were seen moving up to 2 pixels vertically, and foxfires were seen up to 3 pixels above the "ground".
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Great information and a sweet graphic. I hope to post a large collection of information on springs in the coming days. I completely agree with the spring hitbox, mainly that there is no difference between an open or closed spring other than its visual appearance.
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The 2 objects must share a minimum of 1 pixel to register a collision. It was also noticed that fireballs and foxfires can change their "y-position" while maintaining a constant X-value; they can bounce up and down. Fireballs were seen moving up to 2 pixels vertically, and foxfires were seen up to 3 pixels above the "ground".
Great pictures Ethan!
A couple of things about what you said above -- based on how you have drawn the boxes "between" pixels in this picture, the 2 objects actually must share 2 pixels (overlap) to be a collision. Sharing one pixel in the hit boxes (tangent) is not a collision.
Also, I'm pretty sure both fireballs and firefoxes only move up to 2 pixels above the ground (they share all code).
Lastly, with regard to the picture, I'm pretty sure the hit boxes for Jumpman are all too skinny in the x-direction. He has an x radius of 4 out from center, not 3.
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awesome, now if only we could get this for dkjr =)
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man i'm not sure how i missed that for jumpman's x-values, I will fix it. I also wanted to add the hitbox values in text (ie 4x6 for jumpman giving an 9x13 total). Finally, with regard to in-between the pixels, i'm still somewhat confused on that; Should I be drawing the lines to intersect the squares rather than follow their edges?
I will get these modifications done at the latest tomorrow.
Thanks again for the continued input guys!
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Finally, with regard to in-between the pixels, i'm still somewhat confused on that; Should I be drawing the lines to intersect the squares rather than follow their edges?
For a graphic, you could do it either way really and in some respects yours is probably the clearest way to represent the hit boxes. The only issue is if you were to draw a collision graphic with that type of box it will become misleading. The reason is because your boxes will appear to overlap which will seem like it should be a collision when in fact it is NOT a collision, it is merely tangent. Using your method for drawing the boxes, there will actually need to be TWO shared pixels in the x or y direction for there to be a collision.
The other approach would be to thicken the width of your lines to be as wide as the pixels in your graphics and then draw the box right on top of the outer pixels in the hit boxes. This way, when two objects are colliding, it will be much more clear if they are considered to be next to each other (tangent) by the game, where your lines will simply be directly on top of each other, or if they have collided (overlap), where your lines will cross over each other (you'd probably want to use different color boxes for the two objects when doing this). Alternatively, you could fill in the whole box to represent your hit boxes. But, if you do it that way I'd recommend not blacking out the pixels entirely, but instead you could try to make a relatively translucent box where you can still see the pixels underneath it.
Keep up the good work!
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As time allows and as I remember to do it, I'm gonna try to post my session results here in my blog.
Today's Session:
1 Hour, 24 Minutes
Starts: 0
Trips to Level 5: 0
Trips to Level 4: 0
Trips to Level 3: 1
High board: 3-2
Fail.
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Today's Session:
1 Hour, 44 Minutes
Starts: 0
Trips to Level 5: 0
Trips to Level 4: 0
Trips to Level 3: 1
High board: 3-1
Fail.
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What's your target start these days?
I may up my target (maybe 135K) in anticipation of the recording rule changes.
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Recording rule changes? There's new recording rules coming?
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ive heard mention of needing to show an original power supply. from what i understand twin galaxies has updated their recording rules again(not sure if its for all arcade games or just dk)
im not 100% sure of anything i just posted though. i havent read the new tg rules. hopefully it doesnt become even harder for you machinists to submit
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They put the old DK rules back up on the new site (the link has been dead the whole time so far), but I think that was just TG's web company moving content over from the old site to the new one.
It's probably best to just ask Stephen Boyer directly what he considers the rules to be, since he's the DK ref that everybody submits to, and you're not gonna get a real answer from anybody else.
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Yeah, that's messed up, we waited so long to never have to see these rules again, and now the link for the old rules is what is shown now. I guess we need Ken or somebody here to let us know whats going on with that.
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My target start is still 140k although only a small percentage of my successful starts are over 140k. I'd say right now a big majority of my successful starts are in the range of 135k - 140k.
Because I am so aggressive about scoring well on the first 3 screens of the game and I've improved my scoring on 2-2, I always have a very decent chance of exceeding 50k after Level 2 now. This puts me in a position to hit 140k comfortably if things go well, but if things only go about average from there I am generally a bit short.
In general though, I consider "playing at 1.2M pace" to only require starts of about 137,500 so when I come up a bit short of 140k I'm still ok with it.
These are the "Start and Level" benchmarks I've always used:
1M 107,500 + 52,500 / lvl
1.05M 115,000 + 55,000 / lvl
1.1M 122,500 + 57,500 / lvl
1.15M 130,000 + 60,000 / lvl
1.2M 137,500 + 62,500 / lvl
With these benchmarks, any "death points" are just gravy and could serve as a buffer in case some bad luck ruins the pace or fatigue sets in or you just have trouble maintaining pace.
Of course, as you have more trouble hitting these benchmarks, you need to pay more attention to requiring strong deaths to compensate. This has become an important part of my thought process for approaching 1.2M attempts since I don't have the confidence that I can actually average 62,500 / lvl for a whole game. So, whenever possible (especially on barrels), my strategy is to take less risk in the beginning of a screen and take more and more risk towards the end of the screen when I have already banked a "good death" if I end up dying. This is why I allow fireballs to get to the top of a barrel screen so often compared to other players -- because this is the best way to die unintentionally in the game.
The way I currently approach keeping track of my pace in 1.2M games is that I think of the 1.15M benchmarks (which are all extremely easy to remember and/or calculate on the fly) and then realize that I need to "find" an extra 50,000 points somewhere. I try to make up my first 10k on the start and then I look at my 3 extra guys and hope that they are worth roughly 30,000 points. That means, beginning on Level 5, I only need to "make up" an additional 10,000 points to be "on pace". So, if I have a few good levels and can get to where I'm 20,000 over the 1.15M benchmarks with no deaths I'll then consider myself "on pace". Of course, each time I die, this all changes. After one death, I'll consider that I need to be 20,000 over the 1.15M benchmarks just to keep up with my starting point and I still need to "make up" another 10,000 points from there -- and so on.
So, let's say I have a below average start of 132,000 points. I'll already feel like I'm "behind" and I now need to make up 18,000 points beyond 60k / lvl, which is quite a bit more than the 10,000 that I'm comfortable trying to make up after a 140k start. In this example, if I were to get 60,000 on Level 5 and then I get hit by a spring on Level 6 I'll probably be aborting the game right there since the amount of points I'll need to "make up" has become unrealistic. On the other hand, if I score 52,000 points after Level 2 and then I have a 13,000 point death on 3-1, I'll continue that game and be pretty excited about it.
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Got a start today.
Yey.
1 Hour, 49 Minutes
Starts: 1 (140,200)
Trips to Level 5: 1
Trips to Level 4: 2
Trips to Level 3: 3
High board: 10-1
Fail.
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One of these days, you will succeed. I believe!
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I for one am enjoying these stats, by the way. Continue by all means.
I find myself wondering "how much time does Dean actually spend trying to get a start?" so it's nice to have some numbers!
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2 Hours, 00 Minutes
Starts: 0
Trips to Level 5: 0
Trips to Level 4: 1 (with a death)
Trips to Level 3: 1
High board: 4-4
Fail.
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The way I currently approach keeping track of my pace in 1.2M games is that I think of the 1.15M benchmarks (which are all extremely easy to remember and/or calculate on the fly) and then realize that I need to "find" an extra 50,000 points somewhere.
This is pretty much exactly how I think of my pace. Except I'm not trying to gain 50K hehehe... just trying to stay on pace.
This has become an important part of my thought process for approaching 1.2M attempts since I don't have the confidence that I can actually average 62,500 / lvl for a whole game.
Last year, I felt the same way about averaging 60K/level. I thought I was averaging 60K/level, but every long game has a level or 2 where you just get completely hosed and score 5K less than what you think you can average. Furthermore at the end of every long game the level average seems to decrease. In actuality, I was probably averaging 59K/level over a full game.
I admire your patience and persistence. Seems like your tolerance is about 2 hours. Mine is about 1/2 that. If I don't get one started within that hour, I'm kicking/cursing the machine.
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My quest for 1.2 Million has been tabled indefinitely.
New goal: 1,190,000
Those of you who have been patiently watching my stream should see a dramatic difference.
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Oh No (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=saC13RJ8CUs#)
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Dang, so you'll never attempt 1.2M again? I suppose you could still get 1.2M during your 1.19M attempts though.
What was the main reason for lowering your pace 10k? Best of luck to you!
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I guess "indefinitely" isn't the right word, I might go for it again in the future, just not now. My main motivation is because I was in a massive (many many many months) rut with the game where it would often take over 10 hours to get a game started. This just isn't good enough. I know that if I just shave 10k off of my starts (a big chunk of which will be on the 1st 3 screens of the game) I will be getting starts almost immediately and so I can get a lot more meaningful attempts in.
In theory, the way I used to play, it really should require me more than an average of about an hour to get a game started, but for some reason I've been running really bad with the game so I need to change it up or I'll just end up quitting.
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Actually "indefinitely" was the right word, but it is also one of those words in the English language that I always thought sounds worse that what it is. When you hear someone say "He's been suspended indefinitely!", you're like OMG! INDEFINITELY....but, it's definition only means for an undetermined time. Anyway....
When I saw your stream say 1.19M, I thought it was just a joke, but I see what you mean about not having to have that perfect L=3 start to get a game going and having more starts.
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It's an interesting strategy question at all levels. Should you play out more games at a lower start or fewer games with a higher start. Obviously there's a balance somewhere in between. If you play out more games at a lower start, you may still get 1.2M as you're more likely to have a game where the L5+ boards are more cooperative than average. Good luck Dean. Don't give up!
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Haha that's true Dave. Kinda like, "I could care less." Most people mean to say "I couldn't care less."
Also I have been watching Phil play Crazy Kong today, and every time he passes a rivet screen it says GIVE UP!! ...so maybe we should all give up.
But Billy's phone says 'never surrender', so we must play on.
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It's been a while since I've added anything to my blog here, my bad. There's actually a bunch of stuff I've meant to post here but never got around to it.
For now, I'm sure most are aware that I will be attending the KO3 later this month and I'm looking forward to it. It had actually gotten to about a 90% certainty that I would NOT be attending, but just a couple of days ago I got it worked out and my trip is booked.
Once I knew for sure that I would be attending, it was time to dust off my custom control panel (built and donated to me last year by Robert (jammvy)) and hook it up to my computer to play some MAME DK with an extra helping of arcade DK on the side. It's always a bit of a transition moving from my keyboard to arcade controls and because my trip was booked so late I've been somewhat concerned that I won't have enough time to prepare.
But, so far things are progressing pretty well. I just finished up my 3rd or 4th session since hooking up the control panel yesterday, and unfortunately my internet crapped out in the middle of my broadcast for unexplained reasons. I feel like I'm about 80 - 90% of the way towards getting back to my full "arcade control" ability already so that's promising. My maximum arcade control ability is obviously several notches below my ability to play the game with a keyboard and because of that, I am required to actually make a LOT of significant changes to the way that I approach the game in order to avoid deaths due to "awkwardness" or just the simple fact that you lose a few frames when attempting certain maneuvers because of the mechanical nature of the arcade controls. Fortunately, I've been through that process several times before now and so I (sort of) know which adjustments to make to vastly increase safety without giving up "too much" in scoring potential.
Contrary to popular belief, I feel pretty strongly that if I'm going to win the event this year that I'm going to have to break the World Record. In fact, I think it's possible that the record could be broken by multiple players during the event. I've been working on some strategies to try to play beyond record pace while maintaining maximum safety. Tonight I had a decent run that ended at 13-2 at 644,400 points, which is a pace that I'm pretty happy with and I'm glad to have played a game like this in my second day back on a control panel.
There is still plenty to tweak and lots of control panel rust to iron out before the event, but hopefully more progress will be coming soon. I also want to make sure that I'm prepared with some alternate strategies for toning it down in case everyone (including myself) seems to be bombing out, but my gut feeling is that that's not going to happen. The competition is very strong this year and I anticipate some big scores.
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I am very glad you are going to the Kong Off. It wouldn't be the same without you. I'll definitely enjoy watching you, and the other Kong Off competitors from my home. 8)
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Some thoughts regarding personal record and "world record" quests:
First, in my opinion there should never be any negativity associated with the same person beating their own score just because it's the top score. Especially when there is an active competition in place in trying for the top score on a title, but even if there was not (like in most other classic arcade games), every new high score should be fully celebrated. After all, everyone else gets to try as hard as they like to beat their own PR, so why shouldn't the top scorer be able to do the same if they so desire? It's mainly all for fun anyway! So, kudos to Robbie for continuing to play a game that he is still passionate about and sharing his quest with the community.
The other thing that I continue to find very interesting within the community is that people's approach to reaching for a new high score (whether that is a new PR or a new overall high score) seems to fall mainly into two relatively distinct camps: One philosophy seems to be to always play at 90 - 95% of your current maximum ability in order to give yourself a significantly better opportunity to finish the game and hit a new high score with each and every attempt. The other philosophy is to always play at 105 - 110% of your current maximum ability (always a little bit "over the edge") with a numbers game in mind so that when the stars align and we are able to maintain our A game, combined with just the right amount of luck, you might on rare occasion make it to the end of the game, but that game has a significantly better opportunity of being a higher scoring game. Sort of like the difference in mindset between "hitting for average" and "going for the home run" in a manner of speaking.
It is my observation that Robbie seems to prefer the first approach -- making sure to always play within himself by enough that he frequently has games that go deep. As he has improved, his scores have improved, but always within this style of play. It has clearly worked, as he has held the top score for quite a while now. Other great champions who seem to prefer this approach include Hank Chien and Steve Wiebe and some current top contenders also play this way.
The other approach seems to be favored by players such as myself, Billy Mitchell, Ross, Ethan, and Phil, as well as some of the other current top contenders. The results have been and will continue to be less reliable and more chaotic and sporadic, with potential huge jumps in score on a very occasional basis that may or may not ever come to fruition. In many cases, the "eyeball" test will show how strong some of these players really are long before their scores catch up to their skill levels.
(Then, of course, there is multiple tournament champion Jeff Willms who seems to be the only top player who has managed to effectively create a play style that threads exactly between these two approaches for one of the most efficient learning curves ever! But I digress!!)
There is not necessarily a right or wrong approach and it appears that both approaches have been very successful for players who play at a high level. The choice seems to be partially personality driven and partially strategic, among other factors. It has been my belief for a long while now that the second approach will eventually win out in the end and the players who prefer the first approach will eventually have to adjust if they want to remain in the high score race. There is some mathematical basis as to why the first approach may indeed be preferable, which has to do with the fact that a single complete game played with a given style will have some variance in the final score due to a number of different random factors within the game that will directly and indirectly affect the scoring. So, it seems reasonable that playing in a way that will allow for a large number of complete games will provide for some spread within this variance that should be helpful in the high score race. But, right now it is still my belief that the really good "home run" style games will surpass any reasonable estimation of such variance and will lead to higher scores. But, so far Robbie (and others) have proven that wrong!
Enter, the upcoming Kong Off 4. In an interesting twist regarding the change in format, it appears that the first group of players have been given even more of an advantage than in previous events. Everyone will still have to adjust to the specific event conditions, but those players who prefer the first approach to their own personal high score chase will likely have a lot less adjusting to do than those who prefer the second approach. Even players who are seemingly no longer relevant in the high score chase might turn out to be one of the favorites in tournament play under certain formats (Steve Wiebe anyone!?). It should be interesting to see how that plays out throughout the tournament.
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Just recently got back home after a very long travel day. If I attend the event next year I will have to seriously consider flying instead of driving.
The Kong Off 4 left me feeling a very mixed bag of emotions that is a bit difficult to explain. Somewhat unexpectedly, I am still super disappointed and bummed out about my tournament performance and result which was surprising to me since I wasn't taking the competition as seriously this year as I had in years past. I think it's been really getting to me that what I kept fearing would happen to someone in this format ended up happening to me in terms of bombing out really early in a head to head match and I obviously can't help but feel that it was at least 30% my own fault. Combine that with my near miss on my world record attempt which basically was choked away and it just becomes a very unsatisfying experience.
On the other hand, more than ever before I really enjoyed getting to see and hang out with my friends, talk shop about our hobby, cheer on the other players, witness some of the ridiculous drama unfold and just getting to participate in a terrific event.
The change in venue was an interesting choice and overall I liked the idea. Being part of a larger event, but not so large that we were unnoticed, provides the potential for really growing this Kong Off series in the future. It didn't seem to quite play out as Richie may have hoped in terms of the hype and the size of the crowds and so on, but that may have been due to how last minute the announcements were regarding this tournament's location. But, if it is true that Richie has already secured the same location for next year, a lot more planning and marketing and general hype can occur in advance of the next one and that could make a big difference. The physical building itself was enormous. There were hundreds of classic games all over the place, there was a giant area filled with all manner of retro consoles, there were dozens upon dozens of pinball machines and tons of vendors, bouncy houses, food and beer concession stands, and so on. The highly spacious setup allowed for the machines to be spread quite far apart from each other so that the players were not crowding each other. If there was a problem where machines had to be worked on or moved around it was quite a bit easier for that to happen than it has been in previous events which were set up in much tighter quarters. Between each machine was a giant flat screen which broadcast a blown up picture of the player's game in progress. For the most part, the physical setup for players and live viewers was impressive. One oversight was a lack of a viewable scoreboard for people walking by, but some tweaks like that can be easily solved for the next one.
In my opinion, the lack of streaming was a serious issue. I hope that is something that can be worked out with the venue in advance for the next event. I am of the opinion that live streaming within our community has been instrumental in maintaining and growing interest in this hobby over the past 7 years or so. I'm sure Richie would agree as he has routinely streamed general activity within his own arcade as well as producing his web based Arcade Culture show. This year, I personally have had people who I didn't even tell where I was going this weekend tell me that they were frustrated throughout the weekend by the general lack of streaming and the confusion about where to go when there was streaming going on. I hope that is something that will be more carefully planned for future events since, again, I believe that goes a long way towards keeping our hobby alive and active for the future.
As for my trip, I got a bit tied up here before getting on the road to attend the event so I arrived at the hotel just before 3:00am. At around 7:30am we were up, getting ready and heading into the city of Pittsburgh to hunt for some breakfast. We ended up at McDonald's for some greasy food and some coffee, which subsequently caused about a half day of bathroom related stress which does tend to create some extra challenge when trying to play a video game for over 2 hours straight with no pause button. Based on all of this, I pretty much knew that my best chance for being productive on Day 1 was to make something happen before lunch time.
Fortunately, I got on the board on my first quarter. Surprisingly, the game started off pretty well and I managed something like a 129,000 start. From there, I was playing a semi-risky style of my normal bottom hammer strategy, reduced risk in the transition, and minimal grouping up top in order to set up a favorable top hammer. I was going for the free pass pretty aggressively and I was skipping the 3rd elevator prize. This yielded a pace of slightly over 1.1 million points for about half the game. I can't remember the circumstances of my deaths but I remember dying on Level 11 and then again towards the beginning of Level 14, perhaps on the Pie Factory or something. I really wanted to get on the board early and didn't want to squander this game, and I also already had to use the bathroom. So, at that point, I made the decision to switch to top hammer only for the rest of the game, which was about 8 Levels of play. I ended up having one reserve man to cash in at the end which pushed the game up to 1,060,800 points.
It was a huge relief to get this game on the board so early. I knew that it was not going to hold for a first place score, but I was confident that it would hold for at least 8th place and a spot in the finals. At that point, my energy level already began dropping and I began pondering whether I was going to really play any more during the high score competition. The prize money for that portion was not especially significant, and the winner would not be considered the Kong Off 4 champion. I made a couple of half hearted attempts after this which didn't go very far, but I mostly began watching the other games and chatting with friends.
At some point, I noticed that Dan had just finished a lengthy (and frustrating) game of his own and was about to go on an extended break. I saw that he had been streaming and asked if I could borrow his setup while he went on break so that I could try for the world record on a stream. A huge thanks to Dan for basically giving up his stream to me for the rest of the high score contest. Without the stream, I might not have made any serious record attempts since it would be sort of tragic for it to not be on video if the record were to be broken, but with everything set up, I decided that I was going to spend the rest of the high score contest trying for the record instead of playing any "tournament strategy" games designed to give myself the best probability of finishing in first place. By this point Wes had already overtaken the lead with a somewhat epic effort on the last level which was amazing to watch and so I was pretty much conceding the high score contest at that point unless of course I broke the record.
On Day 2, I found the stream all set up for me when I arrived -- huge thanks again to Dan for that. Despite being incredibly sore, particularly in my lower abdomen, enough so that it woke me up several times throughout the night, I still did manage to catch up on sleep (it helped that I slept through the first 2 hours of competition), so my energy level was up. I managed one really big effort that day which ended I believe on Level 17 with maybe 900,000 points or so. Whatever it was, because things had started off so well, I actually had a pretty nice cushion beyond the world record pace, but of course I had a pretty horrendous 3rd death on Level 16 which was a total choke, and the game ended shortly afterwards. This was pretty disappointing since I don't get many opportunities to go for the arcade record and I knew that I was pretty close on that effort, but oh well.
After this, I decided that I was done for the day, I got a beer at the concession stand and came back to witness some serious last quarter drama. I actually feel bad for Steve personally since I feel like I was the one that sort of convinced Ethan to drop another quarter with less than 5 minutes remaining in the contest. Vincent also started a game at around the same moment. It was tough to watch since Steve, Ethan and Vincent are all good friends of mine and there was only room in the finals for two of them. Incredibly, both Ethan AND Vincent managed to top Steve's 1,005,900 point game, putting him outside the cut. I talked to Steve quite a bit throughout the weekend and I feel like probably the only player that felt as disappointed about how things ended up as I did was probably Steve. But at the same time I was very happy for Ethan and Vincent who both did something pretty special to earn their places in the finals.
On Day 3, I had gotten a mediocre night of sleep and again woke up several times with soreness (I guess I really should have hooked up that custom control panel at home for a couple of weeks -- not so much to get used to the controls since that was a non-issue this time around, but perhaps just to work out these arcade playing muscles in advance of the event!) but by the time I arrived for the compeition I was feeling quite good. Subway salads and vitamin waters are better on my stomach than McDonald's Sausages and coffee apparently.
Just before my first match with Mike began, I noticed that my arcade cabinet was very wobbly. I called Richie over and he began trying to jam various objects under the cabinet in an attempt to stabalize it. I had brought a change of clothes with me in a backpack and he opened it up, pulled out my pair of jeans (I played in athletic warm up pants) and stuck a pantleg under the back corner of the cab and voila! It worked! No more wobble.
The match with Mike was actually a great match. He played his game very aggressively to the point where I had some trouble maintaining any pace advantage despite my own somewhat aggressive strategy. I had an early death on the Level 2 rivets in a completely wide open situation purely due to nerves, but the rest of the game went pretty favorably for me and I only had one other close call which would have been my own fault for the next 5 or 6 Levels. He finally started losing men when we were in the 300,000s and I caught one extremely lucky break with a fireball on my 3rd man and shortly after that the match was over.
My match with Hank was the polar opposite. I was playing very comfortably in this match, not really feeling the nerves this time and things started off well with a first man start. I had a screwing on the Level 6 rivets which I was totally ok with and wasn't phased by at all. Then Hank lost two men over the next couple of Levels. My game seemed to be filled with a lot of bad situations this time as compared to my game with Mike which was very favorable, but I was surviving them. Then of course I had the two pie factory deaths for a total of 3 screwings over an unusually short span of screens. I feel like on my A game I may not have died all 3 of these times so I was perhaps only 70% unlucky, but it was still a nasty development for a head to head match and I was just unable to mentally recover and the game ended shortly afterwards.
My strategy in these two matches was likely unique among the competitors. I had a strong suspicion that all of the players would not be considering point pressing until Level 5. I began point pressing the barrel screens on Level 3. In addition, I made sure to leech the springs on the Level 2 and Level 3 elevators, grabbed the hammer on the Level 3 Pies, and tried to set up Kong leeches on the early rivet boards. These strategies had duel purposes. First, I felt like having a slightly higher starting score would help put some pace pressure on my opponents. In addition, these particular point pressing techiques are also relatively time consuming. All of the players made a gentlemen's agreement not to deliberately delay at the top of the barrel boards, but we agreed that any legitimate point pressing that happens to use up some time was fair game. By playing my starts in this manner, I felt like I could generally create a small scoring lead while also generally slipping approximately 1 to 2 screens behind my opponent. From that position, I could watch to see if they were grabbing bottom hammers on barrels. While Hank was grabbing bottom hammers I would then grab the bottom hammer on that same screen when I arrived on it 2 minutes later. When he decided to switch to top hammer, I also switched to top hammer since I knew I was ahead on pace and so it became beneficial to always match his level of risk. I only wish the match had played out longer to see how that would have gone over the long run. Even if I lost, I would have liked to make him earn it. Very disappointing result.
However, one of the enjoyable parts of the event for me was that I had the opportunity to provide some commentary for the last portion of the final match. This actually helped to get me out of the funk I was in after being eliminated from the tournament so I'm glad that I was invited to do it. The final match was interesting to me from a strategy perspective and it's too bad it didn't play out just a little longer to see how the last few levels would have been played. But it was still an exciting finish to witness. Congratulations of course to Hank on winning the tournament. Very impressive.
A bunch of us went out to dinner and then for drinks afterwards which was a great time as usual and then before I knew it it was the next morning and I was driving home. Overall it was an excellent event and I am glad to have participated. Huge thanks to Richie and everyone who helped him out for coming through and putting this event together. It's too bad that a few people that had attended previous events were unable to make it this time, it would have been great to catch up with those guys. But there's always next time! Thanks to the rest of the competitors this year for continuing to push the envelope and provide ever more fierce competition. The more we push each other, the more satisfying it is when we accomplish something in this hobby. I hope everyone continues to stay in touch.
See you all at the Kong Off 5!
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Nice writeup Dean. It's cool to hear your plan of attack for 1-on-1 pairings in the new format. I was trying to get everyone's thoughts on the new bracket format for this year and I don't think anyone said it was a bad thing. It even gives less talented players like myself a chance at the prize, if we can push into the top 8.
Was nice seeing you and everyone. Congrats to the top 8 and to Hank for taking away the belt.
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http://www.twitch.tv/danman123456/v/9350782 (http://www.twitch.tv/danman123456/v/9350782)
Dean's game at wr pace from Saturday night
unreal performance, very entertaining to Watch
the barrel point pressing is ridiculous
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Loved the write-up Dean thanks for that! Its great to see in-depth breakdowns for those of us not fortunate enough to attend the event.
I'm convinced the arcade record will be yours someday. Just a matter of when
:)
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Great write-up Dean, and I agree, if you had full access to an arcade machine I think the record would be yours pretty soon.
I hated missing KO4, and the one that I missed had the least amount of streaming coverage than KO1-3. I was on the road during the bracket tournament, and was getting updates through facebook. It was a little more competitve than I expected, but not sure if I like it as the format for "King of Kong".
I'm still an advocate of highest score, and two days were dedicated to putting up the highest score. Jeff managed to pull that off again. Technically if the format didn't change, that would have been his three-peat. Not to take anything away from Hank, I was glad to see him comeback and get the title back, and how fitting to have the last two record holders go head to head.
Hope to make KO5
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I highlighted Deans Game:
http://www.twitch.tv/danman123456/v/9674676 (http://www.twitch.tv/danman123456/v/9674676)
Dan
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Great job this weekend Dean, you really kicked some ass despite lack of sleep. Even more impressively you had a shot at beating the record by a good amount while in that tired state. It's not easy playing at 100% when you're fatigued from lack of sleep and having to grind out a big start. The 800k-1m range playing at WR pace is the toughest in my opinion and thats where I have made countless mistakes at that point in the game, so I understand why your game ended the way it did.
I agree with lack of streaming how it was by far the biggest issue with the event. The absence of a scoreboard was also another one. It just leaves fans and spectators in the dark about where the players are ranked at that point in time.
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Great write up Dean. Didn't see this until today. I had a great time at the event as well, and the highlight was the top 8 match against you. Lotta nerves before the game started...which ended up building for longer than I had hoped considering the matches were kicked off in 5-10 minute increments (I was expecting a shotgun start). The wobble machine was an awkward thing to notice right before the match started, but glad it got corrected (I didn't know your jeans ended up being the fix, haha).
What you likely don't know is that I nearly had a L2 rivet death happen in the same fashion as yours. I mindlessly ran the star pattern and when I got to the part where you grab the first hammer I realized I had trapped myself in a spot where I didn't have enough time to grab the hammer, or run up or down a ladder, and pure luck would have it that the fireball changed direction and let me live. Also believe it or not, hearing your hearing you lose a man so early in the match really rattled me. I don't think I settled in until I had my own first death which was a poorly timed backjump (jumped too late and barrel hit my toe). After that I knew I was playing the guy with the highest DK score ever, so I committed to a full bottom hammer game and never let up. All of my other men were eaten up by difficult rivet scenarios/screwings, and I believe I lost my last guy on bottom lurking PF fireballs that refused to cooperate.
I was bummed to be eliminated, but the match was great and I was happy to make top 8.
Regarding streaming, I knew this would be an issue going into the event...and had friends/family that really wanted to watch my games during the high score days...so I gave the app Periscope a try. Add a $20 phone holder with a clip, and it worked out great. I think I used up around 3.5-4Gb of data during the weekend, and people told me the stream was pretty good with decent sound and little to no dropouts. If the players have to stream their own content, so be it, but it would be cool if the event took care of that. I also think we need a separate TV for displaying a high score chart for the weekend.
Grabbing lunch/dinner, and talking with a bunch of the players all weekend was a lot of fun, and Richie did an awesome job with everything. Special thanks to Steve Wiltshire for helping me adjust my screen width before day 2 started. It made a huge difference (I also turned up my sound), and I really don't think I would have put up 2 1M games that day if Steve didn't help adjust the screen. Thanks!
Special thanks to Alan for the sweet 1M buttons, and I am looking forward to the video footage Jeff took all weekend.
Also sorry for using your blog for a post that belongs in my blog, but I don't have one. Consider this a fee for the ibuprofen. Kappa
Looking forward to KO5...!
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This blog needs some love so I'll post in here. Just had a solid game today as the Kong Off 5 approaches. 1,182,300 attaching the inp file here for those interested!
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Kreygasm Kreygasm Kreygasm Kreygasm Kreygasm Kreygasm Kreygasm Kreygasm Kreygasm