Good to hear from you once again, Angry. I cannot disagree with the viewpoints you have expressed.(posted 9523 days ago)The point about TG settings is as simple as you stated...if TG is important to you, then Mark Longridge is your man to contact. If leaderboard points are your concern and someone has beaten you with "non-TG settings", by all means quite whining about it, reset your settings to match theirs and wail away! Obviously this isn't encouraging ridiculous settings such as "infinite lives" or the such. But, I believe that most cases are involving nothing more than easy/hard , 3 lives/ 5 lives type of settings. No problem. Someone wants to better one of my scores with this situation? Fine, I'll readjust to your playing field then. Like I alluded to, this is not Twin Galaxies. If and when a particular game or technique gets out of hand, then it can be seriously addressed. Otherwise, stop your complaining and go get yourself a case of whoop-ass to use on the player who invaded your territory! ;)
Tournaments are a different story. The settings that are posted ahead of time are nearly 100% adhered to and that's great. We do have a pair of issues that seem to have the MARP community in a bit of an uproar, and for good reason.
1) Slow frame-rate recording...this issue is one that I take quite personally because evidence has been surfacing recently that players are recording games at frame-rates that greatly dilute any meaning or significance to the great "legitimate" scores. That is very sad indeed. The reason I say I take it personally is for the ever- increasing evidence that at least one player in particular, Phil Lamat, has done a great deal of work surpassing many of my scores on the regular MARP site using less than honorable techniques. Don't go thinking that I'm crying because I "lost" to Phil...no, that's not the case at all. I've lost to many, many great players here and I'm fine with it because they truly and simply just out-played me...end of story. And I salute them for their efforts. I'm not anywhere near the best player here, but it still can be quite irritating to be constantly undermined by a player who has shown several times (Track and Field, Eyes, Crystal Castles to just start the list of obvious infractions)that his recordings are not a result of playing the game well more than it is a show of how well a game can be manipulated by one's computing power (or lack thereof).
2)Secondly, and this may apply to the previously convicted also (I mean, sheesh, if you'll use slow frame-rates, what's to stop you there?)is that the recent finding that MAME can be manipulated to achieve what I refer to as "recording layering". This one is a bit more difficult to detect, but a few things have surfaced and are still being examined by those who are most familiar with the games in question.
The fact of the matter is, this is supposed to be for fun with a little bit of ego sprinkled in for that "edge" of excitement and inspiration to do better on the pasttime that we all obviously greatly enjoy. We could do without players that continuously participate at MARP using the aforementioned techniques. What purpose is it serving you to do this? I'd really love to hear an answer to that one. It wouldn't (and shouldn't) matter that much to worry about the things I'm ranting about except for the fact that I and many other MARPers put in a great deal of time and effort on our recordings only to witness our scores being undermined by the lack of sportsmanship displayed here recently.
To all the great players who do display a sense of fair play here at MARP...I applaud your efforts and encourage you to keep up those great efforts as it is quite fun to watch players of your caliber perform. Even if it's me you're beating up on...doesn't matter...I'm just happy to be among a crowd of great players enjoying their hobby.
JoustGod