Jason's score has been
officially verified and the
DK3 HSL has been updated accordingly. Congrats sir!
I'd like to share some stats from the game, but first a quick refresher on DK3 mechanics:
-DK3 maxes out in difficulty during the board 27/28/29 loop of blue/grey/gold boards then resets when the game loops.
-The RBS (repetitive blue screen) starts at board 160. Board 159 is an expected blue board, which should be followed by a grey board. However, boards 160-256 are all blue boards. Board 257 is actually board 1 of the second loop, so that's an expected blue board, but back to the beginning difficulty. That gives 99 blue boards in a row.
-A "loop" consists of 256 boards. Boards 1-255 are counted as such in the game's code, but board 256 is treated as board 0 with no level indicator. To my eyes it plays the same as a max difficulty blue board, but I'll let the pros discuss whether they feel it plays differently. Board 257 is when the game loops and the game treats this as board 1...counting it as such and returning the game to the original starting difficulty. On and on forever, as far as we know.
-Marathon games on 30k bonus settings can earn up to 37 lives. The 36th life is granted at 990,000 and the 37th is granted at the first points scored after 990,000. After this point, no extra lives can be earned, even after the game loops.
After 2:30:32, Jason went into the RBS with a score of 3,338,300 and 23 lives remaining. Loop 2 came 4:16:05 into the game, at which point Jason's score was 5,696,400 and he only had 4 lives remaining. He would suffer only one more death before passing Riley's WR 21 minutes later, on board 280 (board 24 of the second loop) during the end-stage Bonus calculation, after 4:37:45. Pressing on for another 800k and 36 more minutes, the game ended on board 317 (board 61 of the second loop), after what must have been a grueling 5:13:35 of gameplay.
Jason's 5th death occurred at 1,414,100...very nearly passing his recent 5-man WR of 1,445,600. His best 5-man run during the game was 1,648,100, between boards 233 and 310 (board 54 of second loop). His highest scoring single man was his third-to-last life, which scored 599,300 from board 277 (board 21 of second loop) to board 304 (board 48 of second loop). His longest lasting single man was his first man, which made it to board 30 before dying at 550,700.
In the first loop of the game, Jason had no deaths prior to the max difficulty section (I guess we can call boards 1-26 the "start"?). In the second loop he had one death during the start, on board 277 (or board 21 of the second loop). Not counting the RBS section of the game (in which there were 19 deaths), Jason had 8 deaths on blue boards, 8 deaths on grey boards, and 2 deaths on gold boards. Over the entire course of the game, only once did Jason suffer back-to-back deaths (multiple deaths on same board): on board 70 he lost a man at 1,414,100 and then almost immediately at 1,415,100. There was also only one section of the game where Jason lost lives multiple boards in a row. After losing a life while finishing board 213 at 4,642,000 he then lost a life on board 214 at 4,648,800 and on board 215 at 4,686,500.
I've attached a graph showing the score and death data over the course of the game, with the background being shaded blue/grey/gold to roughly show the board progression. I've also attached a CSV file of that data.
Congrats again on a legendary score, sir. But I don't think your work on DK3 is done yet!
