Robbie's 1.272

[Barra]

[muscleandfitness]

wow 

[ersatz_cats]

by saying robbie meant to cheat you cross the line to lying and slander.

Here are direct quote from Robbie Lakeman taken from the earlier provided screenshots, for anyone who either forgot they existed or didn't bother reading them before commenting:

We decided to experiment with dropping voltages, and once he dropped it, I told him this was the exact RNG John McCurdy gets. Once he dropped it more, we saw the pies glitching, just like in attached video. Once we got just enough voltage at 4.71, the pies came back correctly, and the RNG stayed the same. We both flew up to NH where my machine was, and tested out mine, which was at 4.68, which was odd. Neil brought both the PCB and power supply I was playing on in Florida, so he decided to set that up in my cabinet, and it read 4.74. Somehow the voltage went up without touching anything, but it was really cold where the machine was. We also werent getting the RNG results like we had at his house, where it was 72 degrees. We talked to Blake Reinke about this, and he sent us the video of the NES hot plate hack speedrunners were using to get a better RNG seed more consistently, so we tried putting a space heater on the cab, and dropped it to 4.64, and we got results. Once Neil left, I decided to drop it down to 4.6, and decided not to go any lower than that, and still saw no pie factory glitch, so I decided to put a hair dryer in my cab, and let it run while playing, and then I got these glitches on the pie board, with some of the easiest RNG ever.

First full day grinding out DK on modified hardware to keep the fireballs on the bottom for unlimited grouping. Got over a million well over pace within a handful of tries! One of the easiest rng games I've ever played.

Day two of manipulating hardware for easy rng, I pulled off this sweet attempt that was ahead of pace. Points just fell into my lap.

Nice warmup game on day four of cheating at donkey Kong! Had a very weak 132k start, but since the fireballs kept staying on the bottom for unlimited grouping, I was able to manage to get back on 1.277 pace. All the deaths were my fault too, but when half the game becomes easier by dropping voltage, you can still get deep games consistently...

I finally figured our how to manipulate the pcb to keep the fireballs on the bottom for unlimited grouping all day now. Going deep ahead of pace consistently these days.

Granted, I'm not oblivious to the facetious tone of Robbie's remark "Day four of cheating at Donkey Kong". But joking about cheating, while attempting to cheat (however ineptly), is still attempting to cheat.

[Ohrami]

Because DKF's Donkey Kong leaderboard is ... now simply a list ranking the highest-scoring games of Donkey Kong that have been played by people who xelnia doesn't dislike for whatever reason he has for disliking them it. [sic]

You misused the term "sic". This term is generally used when you are transcribing directly from a text or quote, and the term notes that the erroneous grammar, spelling, or punctuation is found in the original. In this case, the erroneous grammar was added entirely by you and is not found in the original text or quote, so the term "sic" is inaccurately used here.

I'm still waiting for an explanation from the "This is personal" crowd as to why Jeremy and DKF accepted all of Robbie's previous world record scores, before Robbie started manipulating hardware for an attempted advantage.

He accepted Robbie's previous scores because while he disliked him, he didn't have a good enough reason to attempt to justify his biased ban of the player and at least sound somewhat reasonable while doing so. It is the same reason why many of my world records were accepted by the-elite (another record-keeping site that has corrupt and biased moderators, similar to xelnia) until many users banded together to find as many reasons to disparage me to finally have some sort of justification to remove me.

[ersatz_cats]

He accepted Robbie's previous scores because while he disliked him, he didn't have a good enough reason to attempt to justify his biased ban of the player and at least sound somewhat reasonable while doing so.

"I'm sure he would have, but he didn't" isn't actually an explanation.

Only thing that changed is, Robbie started openly trying to cheat.

[xelnia]

jeremy and billy are one and the same.

He accepted Robbie's previous scores because while he disliked him, he didn't have a good enough reason to attempt to justify his biased ban of the player and at least sound somewhat reasonable while doing so.

I appreciate the candor, as misinformed as it is. And I appreciate you going to bat for Robbie, since he never bothered to actually inquire as to whether his new approach was acceptable and has yet to defend himself here. But I'm going to make the very generous assumption that these opinions come from a misunderstanding of the issues at play, otherwise you guys are just making things up to fit your own narrative.

Since you don't seem to believe what I'm actually saying, then the only thing I can offer are my actions. Long after Robbie made his allegiances known, I still verified his WRs. I still provided private score analysis when he asked. I still attempted to help him submit a last-minute score to the Kong League Head-to-Head tournament. When Robbie submitted a WR, years ago, with chopped up video, I was sympathetic to his reasonings and verified the score when he sent me the full video.

Spoiler alert: Robbie is not the first person to speak ill of DKF or myself, and those people still had scores verified. Robbie has trolled, bullied and harassed other players for years, and I still verified his scores.

But, ok, none of that matters because I was just waiting for the opportunity to stick it to Robbie...because it benefits me somehow? I'm actually perfectly happy to say that none of the previous good will I've shown towards Robbie matters, because the action on this score is what we're all concerned about. It's sort of like players getting traded in sports: "what have you done for me lately?"

Robbie tried to modify the hardware to gain an unfair advantage. He failed. Robbie tried to cheat. He failed. That's unacceptable. That's grounds for rejecting a score. If that's not against the spirit of fair play, then I don't know what is.

You're perfectly happy to construct imaginary scenarios and motivations for me, yet specific, blatant, demonstrable claims by Robbie get ignored? Miss me with that bullshit.

I doubt there is a person on this Earth that cares more about the accuracy and integrity of the DK scoreboard than I do. Robbie certainly doesn't, and it truly pains me to have to reject his submission. But I'm not here to rubber stamp his fragile ego. He can stick with the Facebook circle jerks if he wants that.

[francoisadt]

Here are direct quote from Robbie Lakeman taken from the earlier provided screenshots, for anyone who either forgot they existed or didn't bother reading them before commenting:

We decided to experiment with dropping voltages, and once he dropped it, I told him this was the exact RNG John McCurdy gets. Once he dropped it more, we saw the pies glitching, just like in attached video. Once we got just enough voltage at 4.71, the pies came back correctly, and the RNG stayed the same. We both flew up to NH where my machine was, and tested out mine, which was at 4.68, which was odd. Neil brought both the PCB and power supply I was playing on in Florida, so he decided to set that up in my cabinet, and it read 4.74. Somehow the voltage went up without touching anything, but it was really cold where the machine was. We also werent getting the RNG results like we had at his house, where it was 72 degrees. We talked to Blake Reinke about this, and he sent us the video of the NES hot plate hack speedrunners were using to get a better RNG seed more consistently, so we tried putting a space heater on the cab, and dropped it to 4.64, and we got results. Once Neil left, I decided to drop it down to 4.6, and decided not to go any lower than that, and still saw no pie factory glitch, so I decided to put a hair dryer in my cab, and let it run while playing, and then I got these glitches on the pie board, with some of the easiest RNG ever.

This mean a setup with a hair dryer or hotplate are definitely not a standard setup using this in my book this is cheating.

That is the reason why a video showing the setup inside the cabinet is mandatory.

The basic number ONE unwritten rule is:  Arcade cabinet using standard components with standard setup.
Now, we all know what standard components and setup are. An hairdryer is not one of them.

One cannot expect 100's of rules for each different method of cheating. The basic rule is: Is standard setup been used: Yes or No (End of story)

One other thing: The reason why TGSAP process was introduced at Twingalaxies was just this, so that the community decide IF  submissions are valid.

My view is: Sound is a crucial component to identify if PCB are original.

More than one gamer raised a question on this forum why sound is off. Maybe it is a simple answer.

Could it be that when a score is accepted without sound that Billy ' s Lawyer team can use that as precedent predicament that Billy's controversial scores submitted in 2010 are acceptable without sound?

[francoisadt]

One other thought: I do understand that in some cases a gamer could play on a machine without sound, maybe sound is broken.
So my view is: That is a score is not TOP10, I am not bothering accepting a score without sound. But for a World Record, this is a different case,
those submissions must have sound ect..

So accepting previous scores on a leaderboard without sound not in Top10 is not a problem because it does not effect the ranking of the Top scores.

[Ohrami]

I doubt there is a person on this Earth that cares more about the accuracy and integrity of the DK scoreboard than I do.

This is actually false. I have been completely inactive from this forum and community for years and I care more about the accuracy and integrity of the DK scoreboard than you do. The way that I know that I do is that I believe that the best-scoring record that has ever been achieved in the game's entire history should be listed on the leaderboard, and you do not.

I actually don't care about your motivations for rejection at all. The fact is that you struck a legitimately-achieved score from the record on a leaderboard which is intended to display the highest-scoring Donkey Kong players of all time?or at least, I thought that was what it was for until a few days ago.

I understand that you may have worked around Robbie's eccentricities in the past, and even dealt with him saying mean things about you or the other users of the forum. While that is certainly noble of you, it doesn't grant you a pass to then later strike legitimate scores from a leaderboard upon which the only two factors that should be relevant are the actual score achieved within the game and the legitimacy of the practices used while playing.

Try to distance yourself from your own personal biases. In fact, distance yourself entirely from Robbie, his opinions, his personality, and everything about him. You have here a score that was achieved using, as far as you or anyone else can tell, legitimate, original Donkey Kong arcade hardware, using entirely legitimate and accepted practices within the game, with absolutely no evidence of foul play whatsoever, and the score achieved on it was higher than any player ever achieved in a single game before it. Despite all of this, you have rejected the record because of some personal issue with how the person who played that game handled himself, his own personal opinions (which are contradicted by facts) regarding the legitimacy of his own gameplay and actions, and your general personal opinion about the player's character.

If you decide to just completely ignore the above paragraph and insist that Robbie's personality and your personal opinions regarding his personality are somehow relevant to the legitimacy of his scores and whether or not they are deserving of being ranked, by taking a quick look into Robbie's personality and why he made the claims that he did, any rational actor with an unbiased mind can understand precisely the psychology behind why Robbie made the claims that he did. Robbie claimed that he was "cheating" in the game because he was frustrated by the (potentially false) belief that other players were using these hardware modifications in their own gameplay, and was also frustrated by his false belief that these hardware modifications had any influence on the gameplay whatsoever. Thus, he used provocative language by claiming that he himself was cheating by engaging in the same practices as everybody else (implying that many others before him were cheating, and that it is the only reason they were able to achieve better scores than he could in the past) to try to stir up emotions among the users in the community, due to his own frustration, which, admittedly, stemmed entirely from his own irrationality and hubris.

Looked in the objective manner described in the above paragraph (and I'm certain that you or anyone else reading, unless they are intentionally trying to frame the situation into something it is not because they have some bias, would indeed agree is in fact precisely what was occurring), even in a world where they somehow are relevant, Robbie's own personal opinions and public Internet posts are in no way grounds for punishment on the scale of completely expunging his records and stripping him of his rightful title as champion. Your decision here is completely wrong, and it's no wonder that many users are coming out of the wood-works to cast judgement upon you for it. If you check my post history, you will see that I came out of the wood-works years ago, to praise you for your expos? on Billy Mitchell. I have had nothing but the deepest of respect for you for many years. I hope that some day soon, I can return to praise you for reversing your terrible decision on this matter, too.

[homerwannabee]

First off, I love what Jeremy has done for the scoreboard. So what I'm about to say is a complaint I have that hasn't really been addressed.
I was hoping the Robbie defenders would have said something, but it slipped passed their argumentation as well.
So I guess I have to present the argument.
What Robbie did was not a surprise. This low voltage game was months in the making. Everyone knew Robbie was attempting this. It was a big topic of conversation.
So I'm pretty sure Jeremy knew about this months ago.

So my biggest problem is this. Why didn't Jeremy say anything?  All he had to do is say. "Look, I have learned that there are attempts to buck the system by using low voltage games. While I'm uncertain of the validity of this method, I will outright reject any blatant attempts to do so. There will also be the possibility of an outright ban."
But instead Jeremy kept quiet. I do see he touches this subject by saying he didn't ask.  But a clarification of the rules in this particular situation might have adverted this whole thing.
Now Robbie might very well have said, "screw it I'm submitting anyways", but at least he would have given fair warning.

I waited forever and a day for his defenders to make this point, but for some reason it was a blind spot for them.

Again, I am behind Jeremy, and think he's a great scorekeeper but this point needed to be raised.

[xelnia]

I doubt there is a person on this Earth that cares more about the accuracy and integrity of the DK scoreboard than I do.

This is actually false. I have been completely inactive from this forum and community for years and I care more about the accuracy and integrity of the DK scoreboard than you do. The way that I know that I do is that I believe that the best-scoring record that has ever been achieved in the game's entire history should be listed on the leaderboard, and you do not.

We actually want similar things. The difference is that I want a scoreboard based on fair play and at least a modicum of integrity from the competitors. You seem to just want a list of numbers, as evidenced by:

I actually don't care about your motivations for rejection at all.

Which pretty much gives up the game for a lot of the other objectors in this thread. In other words, you already had an end result in mind, without any consideration for what came before. You didn't get what you wanted, so you tell yourself a story where poor, frustrated Robbie (boo fucking hoo) is just misunderstood and graft on some malfeasance on my part. I'm biased because I rejected the score, because only a biased person would reject it? Am I the chicken or the egg in this scenario?

And so our paths diverge. I'll continue to do what I feel is right for the community (active and inactive members alike) and the scoreboard, and you can do whatever it is you do.

Your decision here is completely wrong, and it's no wonder that many users are coming out of the wood-works to cast judgement upon you for it. If you check my post history, you will see that I came out of the wood-works years ago, to praise you for your expos? on Billy Mitchell. I have had nothing but the deepest of respect for you for many years. I hope that some day soon, I can return to praise you for reversing your terrible decision on this matter, too.

I am grateful for the support I've received over this and other issues, both in public and in private. But I don't require, expect, or desire it. I am mindful of the criticisms I have received because, when valid, they allow me to better serve the community.

[xelnia]

So my biggest problem is this. Why didn't Jeremy say anything?

This is a valid point, and there are three reasons. 1) I'm not Robbie's babysitter. While I do try to keep apprised of what's going on, I generally don't chase people around and force the rulebook down their throat. Especially people who should know better. But if I need to start doing that, then so be it. 2) I truly hoped Robbie would move on and leave all this nonsense behind. 3) I assumed if he didn't move on, he might not even submit to DKF, based on his **gasp** clear bias against me and the forum.

So, maybe I should have tried harder to head it off, but that certainly doesn't excuse his later actions.

[Scoundrl]

Jry, I have a question.

Now that Robbie has release the audio for his game so it can be fully scrutinized, why hasnt his score been accepted? I know he tried to cheat in a lot of peoples eyes but cheating really isnt the right word. He seems to have a sincere belief that Johns games have better RNG and thinks this may be a way to even that up. I talked personally with him and Neil about this, even gave advice on how to make that change easier so that proper testing could be done on their hypothesis. Am I banned from the HSL now too?
If the game stands up to scrutiny, why would it not be accepted? If the thought is he simply tried to cheat, that is demonstrably not true. He tried to verify or disprove that voltage matters or doesnt and since he has now offered a proper submission it seems the right thing to do is verify the score by normal means and accept it or reject it on its merits.

-Ken

[LMDAVE]

One question I have is if he didn't show the voltmeter and voltage reading, would there even be a question? I still have no idea why he added the voltage in the submission for no other reason just to suggest a topic to scrutinize the score, is their an ulterior motive with that? who knows. Should have just left it out.

As for audio, I don't know where that even became an issue. Mainly at TG, because I know I refuse to play a game of DK without some jamming music in the background, and TG basically required me to silence the submission so they didn't get copyright claims on their site (that was several years go). So, I submitted a youtube with no audio for that reason. Never was a problem there. But, I know audio is not the issue here, some just keep bringing that up like it is.

[Scoundrl]

As for audio, I don't know where that even became an issue. Mainly at TG, because I know I refuse to play a game of DK without some jamming music in the background, and TG basically required me to silence the submission so they didn't get copyright claims on their site (that was several years go). So, I submitted a youtube with no audio for that reason. Never was a problem there. But, I know audio is not the issue here, some just keep bringing that up like it is.

The audio is an issue because its one way to tell if the game is functioning properly. Since this seems to be a test it would be more important all the evidence be there. There have been other notable scores that hid certain parts of the recordings and those turned out to be important.