Response to Hisa Chan, this is for you.

Tenchi,

Before I get into nauseating detail about why it is not possible I think I had better make sure we are not comparing apples to oranges and ask Novice if he is talking about a machine with ramping turned off. 14.5 million is a very low score if this is the case. Unfortunately as I guess everyone here knows it is often the case when comparing high scores that don’t make sense just a simple matter of the Rom or machine settings being different.

Dissolute city suggests just making “sandwiches” repeatedly. Of course anyone who has played the game at all knows this is not possible, so one has to search for better patterns to better a score. If one is looking for new patterns both the examples Novice gave jump out after about a minute but it is interesting to try and look for patterns with better distribution of tiles.

The first time I played Klax I saw a website which suggested an optimal level 1 pattern of 590,000 points. Actually it is nowhere near the optimal pattern. I have completed a level 1 pattern for 820,000 points.

Klax can be fun to play, but I actually don’t think all that much of it simply because it is so easy to master. After that it is similar to playing one of the poker games, play enough games waiting for good tile distribution.

Since I find it more fun than actually playing it I have created some tools to mess with Klax:

I have written a simulator which will play the game by making the theoretically optimal moves.

I have also written (more difficult) a program which given inputs of level, and tile distribution will generate the optimal pattern.

I have written a program (simple) which given inputs of a pattern, the level, and a skill index will output the average number of games required to complete the pattern. The skill index has a very slight impact basically allowing for better timing when returning tiles to the ramp.

Anyway hoping to here if Novice thinks its possible on a ramping = on machine.

By the way I have also analyzed the algorithm used for the ramp, it is not strictly time based as is mentioned on a few websites.

John S.

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