Author Topic: Dig Dug - Round 1 Dirt Clearing Pattern  (Read 3635 times)

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Offline jerky

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Dig Dug - Round 1 Dirt Clearing Pattern
« on: January 09, 2020, 08:19:06 am »
Here's a round 1 dirt clearing pattern that doesn't require any pumps until just before the final rock drop. Tested in MAME on Rev 1 and 2 romsets.

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More to come ;)
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Offline jerky

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Dig Dug - Round 2 Dirt Clearing Pattern
« Reply #1 on: January 10, 2020, 10:28:17 am »
Round 2 dirt clearing. No pumping required until the rock drop. Rev 1/2 medium difficulty.


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Offline Scoundrl

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Re: Dig Dug - Round 1 Dirt Clearing Pattern
« Reply #2 on: January 10, 2020, 02:12:41 pm »
Very nice. For comparison Donald had 17590 and I had 17000 after 2 on our record games. 18990 is killing it.
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Offline jerky

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Dig Dug - Round 3 Dirt Clearing Pattern
« Reply #3 on: January 11, 2020, 09:22:37 am »

Last one for now...I need to get back to work on dialing in round 12-31 ;)


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Offline homerwannabee

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Re: Dig Dug - Round 1 Dirt Clearing Pattern
« Reply #4 on: January 11, 2020, 11:00:53 am »
Total respect to you for being a pattern maker. Even if you never get the world record there's a very high chance someone will use your patterns in their world record run.
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Offline jerky

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Re: Dig Dug - Round 1 Dirt Clearing Pattern
« Reply #5 on: January 11, 2020, 01:02:35 pm »
Very nice. For comparison Donald had 17590 and I had 17000 after 2 on our record games. 18990 is killing it.

Using all three dirt clearing patterns above along with my other ones you can now score around 147,350 points by the end of round 11. That's without any extra dirt digging on rounds 9 and 11 where I have one monster left.

245 to go!
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Offline jerky

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Re: Dig Dug - Round 1 Dirt Clearing Pattern
« Reply #6 on: January 11, 2020, 01:17:59 pm »
Total respect to you for being a pattern maker. Even if you never get the world record there's a very high chance someone will use your patterns in their world record run.

Thanks :)

I was surprised that you could come up with patterns like this that worked consistently even on the early rounds especially without pumping up enemies until the last rock drop. It almost feels like playing Pac Man with all the predictable close calls and escapes. There are probably multiple approaches to these early rounds that would produce similar results but I have no problem with others using these if it helps push the limits further even if by a few thousand points...or just for fun!

Save states also really helped speed up the process which is why MAME is so great for figuring games out. Back in the day this would have taken weeks if not months of replays to work out not to mention a bunch of quarters.

But it doesn't seem likely that you could keep coming up with stuff like this much farther into the game though. Eventually the number of enemies, their speed and quicker ghosting will likely shut down fun stuff like this or you will have to turn to your pump much sooner to make it work...then it's very hard to keep a consistent pattern going without lots of variations to deal with.

Ultimately you will have to leave two monsters at the end of a round and grind out the digging like the WR holders have...although I can see being able to pattern that to a certain extent (round 12+ for example).

Happy Gaming!
« Last Edit: January 11, 2020, 01:19:39 pm by jerky »
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