What Took You So Long?

[Bliss1083]

Top hammer. Lol. If I'm at the bottom I'll just stand off to the side and if I hit it cool if not at least I'm still alive. Lol. If I have done it it was pure luck on that.

[stella_blue]

Going back to the rivets the thing I'm trying to perfect is unplugging a rivet by walking halfway on it then turning 180 without going tothe other side. Why would you need this some will ask. Well I use it incase I have only a split second to get the rivet before the firefox is there and running completely over then jumping back over isn't an option. It has saved my butt a few times but I've also miss judged it and run too far and turn back into an empty rivet and die. I hope people k ow what I'm talking about. Lol.

I understand completely.  I frequently use that move when I have either hammer on the rivet stage.  I'll head to the right and park myself on top of the rivet, waiting to smash a fireball that's either (1) a freezer on the same girder, or (2) coming up/down one of the ladders from below/above.  I try to avoid completely crossing the rivet, unless the hammer is about to expire and none of the fireballs have any intention of moving far enough left to be within striking range.  Early in the hammer cycle, I don't want to leave myself stranded on the small platform, for 2 reasons:

• I don't want to set myself up for an ambush, trapped by fireballs on both sides, once the hammer runs out.
• I don't want to give up the option of returning to the left for additional possible smashes.

A less common situation is where a freezer is guarding one of the top rivets, very close to it, such that a full crossover is not possible.  In those cases, I might try the move you've described.  I've had some success with it, but my survival rate is far below 100%.

[Bliss1083]

I usually use it say top hammer and I didn't steer a barrel down the first ladder and two barrels later I steer a barrel down and I can either hit the barrel coming at me  and miss the barrel coming down the ladder due to not enough time or hit the ladder barrel as it comes down to the girder and hope I have enough time to hit the barrel behind me or I can try the quick turn barrel coming down on the ladder hope I hit it and then hit the barrel coming towards me. Lol. Hard to explain. I do different things depending on where I'm at in a game.

[stella_blue]

I usually use it say top hammer and I didn't steer a barrel down the first ladder and two barrels later I steer a barrel down and I can either hit the barrel coming at me  and miss the barrel coming down the ladder due to not enough time or hit the ladder barrel as it comes down to the girder and hope I have enough time to hit the barrel behind me or I can try the quick turn barrel coming down on the ladder hope I hit it and then hit the barrel coming towards me. Lol. Hard to explain. I do different things depending on where I'm at in a game.

No worries, I followed that.

I've had the overhead smash backfire on the rivet stage, in situations where I'm certain the hammer will run out before the fireball reaches the bottom of the ladder.  I'll misjudge how quickly/slowly the fireball is descending the ladder, which leads to a mistimed turnaround.  I'm usually not pleased when that happens.

[stella_blue]

Here's a recent discovery that I'm somewhat embarrassed to admit.  At the risk of seeing my face on a future cover of "Idiots Quarterly", here goes:

A few days ago, I had a game where my first death was on a conveyor stage, killed by a fireball on the final ladder.  I was a few pixels from the top when the ladder retracted.  It was one of those excruciatingly long delays, where the fireball had plenty of time to make a sandwich, take a nap, and still get me.  Frustrated, I sat back and viewed the screen as a whole.  While my ladder (the one on the left) was fully retracted, the other one was fully extended.  Huh?

I never realized that the 2 retractable ladders could be out of sync.  Thousands of pie factories, and I never noticed it.  Tunnel vision at its finest.

[VON]

At the risk of further blowing your mind, I must also point out that the ladders actually remain extended for a set period of time, which is somewhere between 4 to 5 in-game timer seconds on the level 5+ timer.  At the beginning of every pie factory (again, level 5+), the right ladder retracts almost immediately, while the left ladder remains extended until the 7200 mark.  If the ladders extended immediately after fully retracting it would be possible to fully know their sequencing.  However, as we all know, the time ladders remain retracted is random, and thus their overall sequencing is random.  But yes, from the moment each ladder fully extends, it will remain extended for 4-5 timer seconds every time.

Hopefully this information will save a life or two.

[stella_blue]

Thanks, Ross.

By the way, have you considered my "Sabre Dance" request, posted back on the 1st page of this thread?

https://donkeykongforum.net/index.php?topic=140.msg1719#msg1719

[VON]

Yes thank you, I will definitely use "Sabre Dance" if I make another video.  No guarantee I will make any more compilation videos though.  One problem is that I lost the software with which I was making videos.  I know I can save my broadcasts straight to drive with FME, so I'll check it out and if that option makes editing possible then the possibility of making another video will increase. 

[ChrisP]

My mind is blown.

I was just reading Steve Sanders very, uh, interesting Donkey Kong book from 1981 and it actually taught me something that I did not know (and believe me, for this book, that is a feat).

I haven't seen anyone else mention this either so here goes:

It turns out you can actually leech Kong on the rivets WITHOUT pressing the stick left/right! You just have to get superclose (you need to get closer on the left side than on the right). Obviously you have to be on the exact pixel, and you're screwed if you get too close, but if you're able to nail it, you can leech Kong just by pressing jump!

When I read that I just thought it was incorrect (this book has at least one inaccuracy per paragraph), but I fired up MAME just to make sure and I'll be damned.

Am I the only one who did not know this?

[marinomitch13]

Haha. Allen does this every now and then because he is a doofus...I'm surprised you never noticed! 

[ChrisP]

This is seriously how I'm going to roll from now on.

Having to yank the stick is obnoxious, and I always have this vague fear that I'm going to accidentally press the stick at the wrong instant and directional-jump across the rivet and either clear the board or land on the firefoxes on the other side of the hole.

[Fast Eddie]

thats a new one on me too Chris, someone posted recently that you can do it with barrels going down the ladders too so makes scense...

i never could find a pdf of sanders book, if anyones up for sharing id be interested in reading it...

cheers

 

[homerwannabee]

My mind is blown.

I was just reading Steve Sanders very, uh, interesting Donkey Kong book from 1981 and it actually taught me something that I did not know (and believe me, for this book, that is a feat).

I haven't seen anyone else mention this either so here goes:

It turns out you can actually leech Kong on the rivets WITHOUT pressing the stick left/right! You just have to get superclose (you need to get closer on the left side than on the right). Obviously you have to be on the exact pixel, and you're screwed if you get too close, but if you're able to nail it, you can leech Kong just by pressing jump!

When I read that I just thought it was incorrect (this book has at least one inaccuracy per paragraph), but I fired up MAME just to make sure and I'll be damned.

Am I the only one who did not know this?

Ironically I was the opposite.   I did not know that you could press the stick left or right to get the 100 points.  Originally I was going one or two pixels away to do my point pressing.  I was frequently frustrated wondering how people could routinely do this without dying. LOL!

[Xermon54]

Chris: You can also do it with barrels (if you're extremely close to it, you just need to jump near it (not over it) without pushing left/right and still earn the 100 points). Obviously, there are no reasons to try that in a real game, but that's still cool to know!

[stella_blue]

This is seriously how I'm going to roll from now on.

Having to yank the stick is obnoxious, and I always have this vague fear that I'm going to accidentally press the stick at the wrong instant and directional-jump across the rivet and either clear the board or land on the firefoxes on the other side of the hole.

If I were playing DK on an arcade machine, I might be inclined to do the same thing, but using a keyboard with MAME makes it a no-brainer (at least for me).  The generosity of the proximity detection routine allows me to straddle the narrow vertical support leading to Pauline's platform and still get the 100 points.  Both types of player controls require the discipline to refrain from instinctively using L/R directional input after a mistimed jump (such as jumping too soon after landing).  In that regard, I believe that pressing an arrow key is less prone to error than physically pushing the joystick left or right.