Mr. Donkey Blog

[ChrisP]

http://twitch.tv/chrisp_kreme

I got my D2K/high score kit in December and I'm trying to get some decent scores on there.

I stopped playing D2K on MAME for a couple of weeks after having broken 200K a couple of times, and now I've started up again on the machine. After 8 attempts on the machine my best is only 155K. I appear to be bottlenecking around that area. I'm not sure what the problem is because I definitely "felt it" last month once I cracked through 200K. I guess I lost my momentum. Either that or the machine is different in some way I'm not conscious of.

I've played 6 full games of DK post-kit installation, the last two of which were top-hammer only. Best of those 6 was 682,000.

[ChrisP]

Last night: began with some false starts at DK, then switched to D2K and beat the saved high of 155,000 with 163,800.

I switched back to DK and managed to play out a game: only 383,900 and I was running boards. Bleh, what a dumpster fire.

Was not in the zone.

However, I managed to bump into the elusive Invisible Ladder while playing D2K!
http://www.twitch.tv/chrisp_kreme/c/1874657

[ChrisP]

Yesterday I plugged in my DK Jr. board and asked Mark to come by and look at a peculiarity in the gameplay. Since I've barely played any Junior I wasn't sure, I'd just noticed that one of the nitpickers on my machine flies lower than it does in the MAME version!

http://www.twitch.tv/chrisp_kreme/c/1879615

Not sure if it gets weirder down the line on later levels because I still suck way too bad at the game to get anywhere.

Here's a shot of the ROMs. The bottom two are clearly not factory:

[marinomitch13]

Wow! Not gonna lie, that's actually pretty cool! I bet ya Mark would love to try his hand at that board!

[marky_d]

Well, Chris it would appear you have an unmamed official Nintendo DKJR Modification Kit! Awesome!

http://mamedev.org/source/src/mame/drivers/dkong.c

*****************
Donkey Kong Junior Notes
========================

    DJR-03  Donkey Kong Modification Kits                 02-23-83
    --------------------------------------------------------------
    Nintendo Service Department Bulletin # DJR-03         02-23-83
    GAME: Donkey Kong Junior
    SUBJECT: Play Time

    It has come to our attention that play time on Donkey Kong
    Junior is, in some cases, excessive, while in other cases
    there is concern over the ability of players to learn the
    game and thereby retain an interest in playing.

    We are making available, through our Nintendo Distributors,
    two EPROM change kits, designated DJR1-E and DJR1-P.

    The E kit consists of four (4) chips and is an easier version
    of the program.  it presents the board sequence in a way which
    familiarizes the players with the game faster.  The board
    order is vines, springboard, Mario's hideout and keys.

    The P kit is a more difficult version consisting of two chips.
    The order remains the same while more and faster
    obstacles (snapjaws, nitpickers, etc.) are presented.
    --------------------------------------------------------------

    E-Kit - roms
    ------------------------------------------------
    Filename    Label          Type   Loc/PCB  CSum
    ----------- -------------- ------ -------  ---- --
    2732.5Ae    DJR1-C-5A e    2732   5A(CPU)  68E9
    2764.5Be    DJR1-C-5B e    2764   5B(CPU)  B0CF
    2764.5Ce    DJR1-C-5C e    2764   5C(CPU)  FC64
    2764.5Ee    DJR1-C-5E e    2764   5E(CPU)  7CC6
    ------------------------------------------------

    P-Kit roms (Still looking for these, suffix is
    more than likely P.
    ------------------------------------------------
    Filename    Label          Type   Loc/PCB  CSum
    ----------- -------------- ------ -------  ---- --
    empty       ---------      ----   5A(CPU)  ----
    2764.5Bp    DJR1-C-5B p    2764   5B(CPU)  1B58
    2764.5Cp    DJR1-C-5C p    2764   5C(CPU)  F4FE
    ------------------------------------------------


*****************

[marinomitch13]

Cool, so he has one of the harder boards (?). It looked like the birds were significantly faster.

Edit: On second look, they look to maybe be the same speed.

[ChrisP]

WOW! So this IS official??

And the MAME team is "still looking for these"?

Too bad I don't have a ROM burner. Damn, I would like to get this P-Kit to the MAME team and have them add it for posterity.

[JCHarrist]

Hah! I called it.

I'm surprised that we don't see more of these out there.

[ChrisP]

I've decided to record, but not stream, for a while.

I'm not sure if it's a coincidence, but I invariably do better when I'm "alone." I seem to be more capable of getting into the magical DK zone when it's just me and the machine. There's just something about the intimacy of it.

I guess it makes sense, because there's no way that the chat isn't at least something of a distraction, and when I start yammering with everybody I definitely lose focus. My brain doesn't want to have to produce words and play at the same time.

The annoying thing is that XSplit puts a big, ugly watermark on local recordings, but not on streams, even though when you stream you can tick a box that saves a local copy of the stream but without the watermark! So I had to set up a second Twitch account solely for "private" streaming so that I can uselessly stream to 0 viewers but get watermark-free recordings.

P.S. as of this post, Mitchell and I are tied at 38 for total post count, which is good, now I don't feel like I'm posting too much...

[Scoundrl]

I've decided to record, but not stream, for a while.

I'm not sure if it's a coincidence, but I invariably do better when I'm "alone." I seem to be more capable of getting into the magical DK zone when it's just me and the machine. There's just something about the intimacy of it.

I guess it makes sense, because there's no way that the chat isn't at least something of a distraction, and when I start yammering with everybody I definitely lose focus. My brain doesn't want to have to produce words and play at the same time.

The annoying thing is that XSplit puts a big, ugly watermark on local recordings, but not on streams, even though when you stream you can tick a box that saves a local copy of the stream but without the watermark! So I had to set up a second Twitch account solely for "private" streaming so that I can uselessly stream to 0 viewers but get watermark-free recordings.

P.S. as of this post, Mitchell and I are tied at 38 for total post count, which is good, now I don't feel like I'm posting too much...

For local recording i prefer flash media encoder to xsplit. mostly because you have more control over the output, limit time, size and what not, as well as no watermark or streaming requirement. You also get better quality video and audio.

[Simpsons99]

looks like a bootleg to me

[JCHarrist]

looks like a bootleg to me

It's an original Nintendo board. It's just had 2 ROM chips replaced.

[marinomitch13]

Haha, Chris. Post wars! Honestly, I swing back and forth from wanting to post more (since so much is still needed to get these forums up to date on all the info that is either lost or simply posted on other forums), to wanting to post less (simply because I am lazy). Eventually we will have this forum really loaded with well-organized info, and even now this place is turning into an awesome place!

[ChrisP]

Ken, thanks for the tip on FMLE!

I am having such a better time with this than XSplit. I feel like I have more fine-tuning control over everything, I'm getting less frame-skipping and other BS, it's fine for a "single camera" thing like I'm doing with my DK games, and the program doesn't take an hour to start up (waiting for XSplit to start is torture). This is definitely the way to go.

[Ohrami]

You should try FFSplit for streaming instead of XSplit