I am taking my 8,772,700 score off the list

[homerwannabee]

Well I did it.  I finely decided to some more extensive research into the difficulty settings of Donkey Kong 3.  At first I tried counting the time the worms went down, and found to no success that they came down at the same time.  Then I decided to do something different.  Count how many times Donkey Kong threw his coconuts.  Of particular interest to me was my Donkey Kong 3 dip switch (3)  settings Marathon score on Arcade settings.  This is also known as Hard on MAME.  I thought for awhile now something was wrong about it.  I even made a thread on these forums sometime back stating as such. No one decided to confirm my beliefs, and so the thread died.   But after counting how many coconuts Donkey Kong throws on hard level for the higher levels I am positive it's not Hard.  It maybe Dip Switch (2) settings, but I am not positive, and so it's gotta go down.

This really sucks.  Facing the reality that a score I achieved. Probably my greatest known score is not real.  By the way I will be replacing this score with my 5,915,700 MAME score.

Here is my 8.7 million score.  Look at the time when he throws the 10th coconut.  It's 4600 to 4300 on the blue/grey stages.  On the Yellow/gold board stage the 10th throw is at I think 5300

Here is my 5.9 million score on MAME on Hard settings.  Again look at the time he throws the 10th coconut.  It's more around 5000 on blue grey boards, and 5500 on the gold/yellow board.

I have two people to thank for figuring this out.  Billy Mitchell, and Brian Allen.  Both non intentionally helping me.  For Billy Mitchell it was because he accidentally knocked over my camera.  Before it was knocked over the camera did not show the bonus timer.  After it was knocked over it did.  And of course I thank Brian Allen for submitting the wrong settings score.  It got me curious as to a more accurate way to figure out how to tell what is hard, and what is not.

The reason it took this long is because I did this at Twin Galaxies headquarters at the time at Denver Colorado.  I thought the settings were correct, and even asked a couple of times if these were on correct settings.  It was the Kong Off II by the way.

Also one more thing.  I am pretty sure the 5 man was put on the correct settings.  It just felt harder right off the bat, and was the reason for me questioning all these years.

So there you have it.  This sucks.

[xelnia]

Here is my 8.7 million score.  Look at the time when he throws the 10th coconut.  It's 4600 to 4300 on the blue/grey stages.  On the Yellow/gold board stage the 10th throw is at I think 5300
https://youtu.be/TUB-h9BGoOU?t=1273

Here is my 5.9 million score on MAME on Hard settings.  Again look at the time he throws the 10th coconut.  It's more around 5000 on blue grey boards, and 5500 on the gold/yellow board.
https://youtu.be/TPXN1KRtwFo?t=3055

Are you sure this an accurate method of judging difficulty? Here's a blue board from your 13.9M Difficulty 1 Marathon, where the 10th coconut is thrown at 5100. The board I'm talking about starts at 1:33:18.

[noembed]http://youtu.be/wA6FGYslfwA?t=5598[/noembed]

My guess is that there is an internal table in the DK3 code that governs the bug/coconut attack patterns of each board. Depending on the overall difficulty selected with DIPs, the game will progress through that table in a certain order (similar to how Galaga works, I believe). It's possible that equivalent colored boards don't play the same deep in the game. There might be, say, 3 different attack patterns in the table for blue boards. If that's the case you can't just compare any two blue boards visually; you would need to make sure you're comparing the same stage number.

So, if that's true, I think you need to convince someone to break down the DK3 code to determine what is happening internally, then you can find a way to reference certain things visually without the need for seeing the DIPs.

[homerwannabee]

Here is my 8.7 million score.  Look at the time when he throws the 10th coconut.  It's 4600 to 4300 on the blue/grey stages.  On the Yellow/gold board stage the 10th throw is at I think 5300
https://youtu.be/TUB-h9BGoOU?t=1273

Here is my 5.9 million score on MAME on Hard settings.  Again look at the time he throws the 10th coconut.  It's more around 5000 on blue grey boards, and 5500 on the gold/yellow board.
https://youtu.be/TPXN1KRtwFo?t=3055

Are you sure this an accurate method of judging difficulty? Here's a blue board from your 13.9M Difficulty 1 Marathon, where the 10th coconut is thrown at 5100. The board I'm talking about starts at 1:33:18.

[noembed]http://youtu.be/wA6FGYslfwA?t=5598[/noembed]

My guess is that there is an internal table in the DK3 code that governs the bug/coconut attack patterns of each board. Depending on the overall difficulty selected with DIPs, the game will progress through that table in a certain order (similar to how Galaga works, I believe). It's possible that equivalent colored boards don't play the same deep in the game. There might be, say, 3 different attack patterns in the table for blue boards. If that's the case you can't just compare any two blue boards visually; you would need to make sure you're comparing the same stage number.

So, if that's true, I think you need to convince someone to break down the DK3 code to determine what is happening internally, then you can find a way to reference certain things visually without the need for seeing the DIPs.

Egads, OK, I put the score back up for the time being.  This will take more extensive research than I thought.

[xelnia]

Well, George, I think you may be right after all. I did some more digging and I'm convinced that this score was set on Difficulty 2 (MAME Medium), and NOT the TG Arcade setting of Difficulty 3 (MAME Hard).

Your initial look at the coconuts didn't convince me, as I explained, so I started looking for some other things to measure. The Bonus Timer would have worked, but it's not visible in your video. So, I ended up using the rate at which Kong descends on the vines (ropes?).

Below is a table that gives the rate, in frames, at which Kong descends for every "step" along the way. As you get deeper into the game, the rate increases. For example, on Difficulty 1, on Board 1 Kong takes 65 frames for each drop. On Board 6 this speeds up to 57 frames per drop. All Difficulty levels reach the maximum drop rate by Board 27. There are things that cause Kong to pause (spraying him, coconut throwing) but he always resumes his descent at the drop rate for that board. The counter that determines when he moves will actually pause during those spray/coconut moments and then pick back up in same spot when those animations are finished. Anyway...

I downloaded Part 1 of your video and used VirtualDub to examine it frame-by-frame. There are 4 boards that I think conclusively prove this was on Difficulty 2 settings: Board 3, Board 12, Board 18, and Board 21.

On Board 3, your video matches the 57 frames per drop rate. Looking at the table below, that value matches both Difficulty 2 and Difficulty 3. So, that rules out Difficulty 1 and Difficulty 4. On Board 12, your video matches the 51 frames per drop rate, which would match both Difficulty 1 and Difficulty 2. However, Board 3 rules out Difficulty 1, so we're left with Difficulty 2.

To make sure the video quality wasn't interfering with my analysis, I checked Board 18 and Board 21 as well. Both boards match the value expected for Difficulty 2. Board 18 was too slow to be Difficulty 3 (but matches Difficulty 1). Board 21 was too slow to be Difficulty 3 but too fast to be Difficulty 1.

Let me know what you think. At this point I will probably move this score over to the Difficulty 2 Marathon HSL, replacing your 6.1M MAME score. I'll also need some links/INPs for your best actual Difficulty 3 score. And speaking of INPs, you should post the ones you have for your 1.5M Difficulty 2 5-man, 2.4M Difficulty 4 Marathon, and 600k Difficulty 4 5-man.

Frames Between Each Drop (at 60 frames per second)

Board	Difficulty 1	Difficulty 2	Difficulty 3	Difficulty 4
Board 1	65	65	57	57
Board 2	|	|	|	|
Board 3	|	57	|	51
Board 4	|	|	|	|
Board 5	|	|	|	|
Board 6	57	|	51	43
Board 7	|	|	|	|
Board 8	|	|	|	|
Board 9	|	51	43	33
Board 10	|	|	|	|
Board 11	|	|	|	|
Board 12	51	|	|	26
Board 13	|	|	|	|
Board 14	|	|	|	|
Board 15	|	43	|	20
Board 16	|	|	|	|
Board 17	|	|	|	|
Board 18	43	|	26	13
Board 19	|	|	|	|
Board 20	|	|	|	|
Board 21	|	26	20	|
Board 22	|	|	|	|
Board 23	|	|	|	|
Board 24	26	|	|	|
Board 25	|	|	|	|
Board 26	|	|	|	|
Board 27	|	20	13	8

[homerwannabee]

Not the worst thing in the world for me.  It can be just switched over to the medium difficulty 2 settings for the record. Well here is a video of my MAME Hard 5,915,700 score.  You probably are going to need the inp though. I'll work on getting that.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPXN1KRtwFo