Donkey Kong Wildcard Tournament Rematch #2

[Simpsons99]

Brian,

Did not get the email.  Just checked again to make sure.

Please send again.

dkwildcardrematch@gmail.com

just sent it again.

Might be the Gmail thing

[ChrisP]

What problems did we have last time?  I'm getting old and have a short memory.

Off the top of my head, there was some uncertainty when it came to a few contestants and stream URLs, one video submission that was hard to find, and another was non-existent.

Not a big deal, and none were your fault, but I think your rules this time will keep that kind of stuff from happening.

Also   , the "power trip" comment was our feeble attempt at a joke.

Of course! I was just joshin' as well.

[lakeman421]

I just sent the email.  Let me know if you need anything else.

[ChrisP]

I have one concern about the integrity of this tournament, and a solution to offer.

I've found that a good rule-of-thumb to go by, in contests, is that where there's a prize, there's cheating. Or at least, the possibility of cheating.

There is a not-insignificant amount of money on the table in this tournament, some strangers and near-strangers are likely to participate, and I'd say that this calls for an extra level of security, for everyone's sake.

The dynamics of this particular tournament present a specific, and very easily exploitable, potential cheat: streaming software allows the user to play back a video file in such a way as to make it totally indistinguishable from a live performance, and a person could do this whether on an arcade machine or on MAME. (MAME makes it even easier: put a nice game together, simply run MAME to play back the INP file and voila - you win).

It's just way too easy for a player to run a pre-recorded game and add a little "live" spoken commentary (such as interaction with the chat) to make it seem as though the game is happening then and there.

So I'd like to propose a very simple workaround that would make such a cheat impossible: require the player to, at some point during the submitted game, have Jumpman "signal" the refs.

The signal can be anything - jump three times in a row, park at the top of a barrel screen for 3 seconds, wiggle back and forth on a rivet screen, whatever. Just something specific enough to be unmistakable that a player wouldn't normally do, and that won't run the risk of losing the player a life or any more than 1 or 2 timer ticks.

The key is to have the refs agree on a specific signal of their choosing and keep it a secret amongst themselves until a few hours before the tournament begins, at which point they can reveal it to the contestants.

As long as the player gives the signal at some point during his game (and gives the refs a timecode), then the refs and everyone else will have proof that all games are legit live performances and not recordings.

What does everybody think of this idea?

[marinomitch13]

I agree, Chris. I think this 'signal' would be best to do on the first elevator, as that poses the least risk to the player (if any).

[ChrisP]

An argument could be made for waiting until later in the game, perhaps after, or just before, a "bounty trigger"? That way you'd only have to do it if you were intending to claim a prize.

I would just ask that it not be something on the initial-entry screen, as some of us will be playing on savekits with fully-loaded scoreboards! In such cases you could easily have a bounty-eligible game but no initial entry screen to signal the refs. (Even with the default scoreboard you could end up with 1,004,200 and not be able to enter your initials because of the wraparound.)

Incidentally, it should probably be made explicit in the rules that D2K or other Braze kits are allowed. For that matter, how about 60-in-1s? It would never fly with TG, but (aside from some sound effects) my experience is that 60-in-1 DK is as arcade-accurate as MAME is, which makes sense, seeing as the 60-in-1 boards run off of MAME code...

[Fast Eddie]

shit, there goes my plan to score 1,167,400 

[Milehighdt]

I would be in favor of having to perform some kind of stunt and asked Eric about it in my initial contact with him before the first wildcard contest. I believe it should be on the first screen before you really get into the game. That way your not likely to forget and if you do its easy to restart. A specific wall jump or ladder path would identify it as tournament day play.

[Jeffw]

Maybe it could be some spacial initials that must be entered after the game, or maybe they should just have to enter the special initials, then remove them, then enter their own initials. The main advantages of this approach is that it would be easier to enter special initials than to do something in the actual gameplay, and also there are many more possible secret initials than there are possible signals on 1-1 that don't create risk.

One problem with this approach are that a player could get just over 1m so they wouldn't be able to enter their initials. In this situation maybe they could just be required to start a new game and end it at like 5k or so then enter the special initials on that game.

I guess the biggest problem with this would be situations where someone is playing on a version of dk that keeps scores permanently, or the scenario where a person has already been playing for a while and has filled the scoreboard with fairly high scores, so that it won't be easy to enter any kind of initials after a 1m game.

[Simpsons99]

Theres ways of telling if a game is Pre recorded or not ...   Most players have there scores listed on TG or Marp  or somekind of score data base..  Clearly look to see if any of the same scores are listed by that player and when it happened.
If the person quickly plays a game and submits a score and stops streaming and leaves the contest .  Most players do not get a great game right out of the shoot!
It's bad enough we have to say our name each time we start a game.. Now theres a guess on if the game is reallly played or not.

[Xermon54]

I would be in favor of having to perform some kind of stunt

My suggestion would be for everyone to execute a 3x100 off the same barrel on the same platform on the top hammer platform near Kong's broken ladder. Like that, we will be sure that no one will cheat. I think this is the only good idea.

[ChrisP]

Jeff, I think you skipped over a post or two... 

However, good to see that several of us are on the same page with the initial entry problem.

[ChrisP]

Theres ways of telling if a game is Pre recorded or not ...   Most players have there scores listed on TG or Marp  or somekind of score data base..  Clearly look to see if any of the same scores are listed by that player and when it happened.
If the person quickly plays a game and submits a score and stops streaming and leaves the contest .  Most players do not get a great game right out of the shoot!
It's bad enough we have to say our name each time we start a game.. Now theres a guess on if the game is reallly played or not.

I'll give you the perfect example Brian: the night before last, I had my second-best game ever and got 890K and a kill screen. I was recording the whole time. That game might have been good for 2nd or 3rd place, maybe even 1st, plus first kill screen, not to mention the potential for the "last man" bounty since I ran my last guy for 47 screens.

If I were the unscrupulous type and wanted some easy cash, knowing that this tourney was coming up in a couple of weeks, I could have just kept silent about the game until the night of the tournament and then "rolled the tape."

In fact, having that game on Thursday is the exact reason this concern came to me at all. The "playback" scenario was the first thing to flash through my mind. Not as something I was considering doing, but as a threat. I would never do that, but I can't say that nobody else would.

[Simpsons99]

pre recorded inp scores i could see this happening with..   But they would clearly need the game showing before they started broadcasting.    They would get caught loading the recorded inp live on there channel .

Arcade Game videos you can tell what is live and what is'nt

[marinomitch13]

Brian is right, as long as there is volume, fake arcade scores will be super easy to spot. To a certain degree, requiring that there be a mic that would pick up keystrokes, people on MAME would struggle to cheat as well.