The purpose of the DK High Score List has always been to serve the DK community with an evidence-based, community verified list. I created it because I saw a real opportunity to encourage players to strive for Donkey Kong excellence. I have striven in all of my endeavors to establish a list that is relevant, affordable, accountable, and certain. If you have read all of the posts which I have created in this thread you know that I am a person of integrity and that I care very much about maintaining this list “like a bossâ€! Even with this pride of ownership, I wish to convey that this list belongs to the community. And one day I would like to see how it could function differently. Jeremy has stated the following:
“The HSL needs to be moved to it's own sub-forum. There should be three pinned threads: 1) List Rules, 2) The Actual HSL, and 3) Submissions. Any forum member can create new threads to discuss scores, rules changes, or anything score-related as needed. Any changes to the List Rules should be announced on the front page where everyone can see it every time they visit the site.†I think we should actually consider this arrangement and see how Jeff could help us set this up. With the communities permission I would like to serve as head referee and scorekeeper if at all possible. I have to do something with this pride of ownership.
As all of you know, the criteria has grown and developed over a long period of time. This has not been an easy process and has been hammered out through community discussions. New situations arrive all the time that require special consideration. Here is my general philosophy: I believe that there are principles that underlie the rules that are created. These principles may not express themselves in explicit ways until they must be applied to new score submissions and often this means that the way these principles are expressed in the criteria need to be made more exact. It has been my hope that this criteria has protected the integrity of the list.
For example, when Svarar put up over a million game in the manner he did and on the cab that he did, it made me think and process more and I do believe that I was able to accept his score with a clear conscience and without explicitly violating the present established criteria. In fact, thanks to Svarar, my understanding of those underlying principles have deepened and as a result I have been able to craft the criteria in such a way to accept his score without compromising the criteria. In fact, these kinds of situations only press me to better explain and define the rules. As of today, I have been fair, consistent, and have not retracted any established criteria. I plan to remain just as fervent in this matter as well. My full explanation concerning Svarar’s score acceptance can be found in this thread.
The question on the table concerns the recent addition of requiring .inp and .wlf files for all WolfMAME submissions. Somewhere between Jeremy’s score submission, Dustin’s question about using other emulators, and other’s discussing inp verification, I began to find value in the inp verification process. Not so much to have an inp for the sake of having an inp, but for the purpose it would serve. I had stated the following on the DK HSL and also in the WRC #3 thread: “Requiring people to post the zip folder containing the .inp and .wlf files allows me to verify the checksum and speed of emulation. It also requires the player to Play and Record which will automatically disallow pausing, so this will never be an issue. If someone is recording and had used cheats (if there are any for DK) then the input will not play back for me at all. This will also help with the concern of people trying to stream a MAME game that looks real through software and save-states which had been mentioned at one time. Requiring the inp and wlf files will eliminate this streaming issue. Having the files adds evidence to the list which I will hyperlink as INP in the source category. If anyone has their .inp and .wlf files for the game they have on the list, please feel free to put a copy of these into a zip folder and attach it to a post in this threadâ€. Hank’s words had stuck with me from the beginning of this list: “Give me a week and I can stream a 1.2M MAME game on twitch. With a little extra effort, I could even make it appear live.†With the use of Twitch and the kind of video editing software that exists out there I recognized the need for some kind of way of addressing this issue. I stand by the purpose behind the requirement for the inp and wlf files, and I fully support the requirement itself.
In each case that has arisen over time there has been the need to more fully develop the Auxiliary rules which ends with these words: “All scores which are being submitted according to the Auxiliary Rules will be handled on case by case bases and must be peer-reviewed, and a general consensus must be given by the DK Community that the score is probably genuine.†I wrote this with the purpose of allowing further discussion concerning new situations that will test the rules and force them into a more developed form. This means that the criteria for requiring inp and wlf files are not to be interpreted in an absolute literalistic sense because they were posted to serve a particular purpose, with an express intent by its author.
The question is: “Will other forms of verification address the same concerns and fulfill the same principle?†After analyzing both Christian’s streamed game and now the game that was awesomely done this evening by Robbie Lakeman, I have concluded the following:
Those who are submitting their scores under the Normative rules will always be required to offer the inp and wlf files as part of their score submission.
However, the Auxiliary rules will follow the following reasoning:
Streams that only contain the mere window capture of Donkey Kong are required to follow the inp submission rules. This stream setup is, for lack of better words, more subject to suspicion, and could easily be exploited to falsify a game score. And just so everyone is aware that Phil’s game was not accepted merely by his Twitch performance, but because he submitted the inp file to MARP and therefore was available to me. This is important to note at this point because his stream is close to a mere window capture of Donkey Kong.
In order for the purpose behind the inp rule to be fulfilled without an actual inp file, then we will need to see additional elements in the stream.
Christian’s game is actually a monitor capture and we can see what programs are open and we can see that the MAME game that he is playing is the active window on the bottom of the screen. While ending one game, with the game still on, he begins another. This can not be done with an inp playback. While streaming, Christian, continues to move from the game to live chat on his stream and various other locations without pausing. There is an extremely low probability that anyone would be able to make a stream look like that and not have it be real! These additional elements fulfill the purpose for why I included the inp requirement.
Robbie’s game is done with a webcam pointed at his computer monitor. We can see and hear him through out and at the end. He shows himself to verify that it was him that did the score. He was able to put in his initials and restart the game without any problem, which could not be done with an inp playback or video software given that he did it upon a request in the chat, so we know it was done live on MAME. He shows his computer screen afterwards showing that no other programs where open on the computer, and that he was using the MAME program to play the game. In other words, we can see for ourselves that he does not have any video software or anything else that was being streamed to Twitch. These additional elements fulfill the purpose for why I included the inp requirement.
I am accepting the scores that were achieved by both Christian and Robbie. I will be updating these scores tomorrow and updating the Auxiliary rules as well to better explain the purpose and intent of the inp rule, and that I am allow additional evidence to fulfill that purpose.
In conclusion, I am not altering the inp rule, I am accepting additional evidence to fulfill the purpose that underlies the rule. I apologize to those whose scores were not yet accepted due to the lack of development in the criteria in this new area. I especially apologize to Robbie, since discussions of accepting his score immediately after a wonderful performance was potentially discouraging and detract from his moment. I appreciate your patience and forgiveness.
