MARP Tournament - Unofficial Rules

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I've been given the go ahead to get this tournament started, so I'm going to take coordination and get it started as soon as possible - I'm looking forward to this exciting and hopefully historical event. :)

I feel that it's most fair that all participants have a say on what the rules are going to be. There are a few rules that I'm going to lock, for one reason or another... so here we go...

XXX - Rule is locked *** - Rule is flexible - you are NOT restrained to the ideas listed, feel free to submit your own.

VOTING ON RULES:

*** - 2/3 Majority will get the rule. If there are ties, then I will attempt to make a comprimise.

VOTING ON GAMES:

XXX - Each participant picks up to five games - each getting one vote, except his/her favorite one, where it's worth two votes. Include in the vote wheater or not you can judge that game or not. Don't worry if you can't judge any games you pick. :)

XXX - Include in your votes anything you want to say to the rules listed below.

XXX - Please make your votes in the 'MARP Tournament - Time to Pick Your Games!' Thread. This way, everything is in one thread. :) I'm not going to enforce this rule very well, and no, I won't disqualify you if you put it in the wrong thread. Just a request :)

XXX - Voting will last about 2 1/2 weeks - it will end June 31st at 23:59 GMT - 7:59 PM Eastern Daylight Time.

The reason for the five game rule is...

GAME SELECTION:

*** - I think the top ten(or whatever) votegetters should not neccessarily be chosen to be played during this tournament. I think that if a game sends a person beyond 20 leaderboard points in the MARP, (using the 10-3-1 system, mixing appropriate clones) then the game should not be played. I was thinking that rule to keep things competitive and interesting, but then again, you might not think that way.

*** - I think that if there are ties in votegetters, then the quickest voter gets first priority.(Hey... gotta decide somehow.)

DIP SETTINGS:

*** - I think TG Settings should be used. If there are no TG Settings, then I think MAME Defaults should be used. If there are no TG settings, please indicate such in your vote.

JUDGES:

*** - Anyone is welcome to judge a game. Hopefully we'll have enough judges to help :)

VERSION OF MAME USED:

*** - I'm thinking this: If a game is working during or before the release of MAME 34, then MAME 34 FINAL should be used. If a game became working after Mame 34 final, then no earlier than MAME 35 RELEASE CANDIDATE 1 should be used. This way, all games can be used. Please include in your vote which games should use which version.

LENGTH OF CONTEST:

*** - I'm thinking anywhere from five to twenty games.

*** - I'm thinking three months is a good length of time to play the games. That would mean we'd go from July 1st til September 30th.

VALIDATION OF GAMES:

XXX - All recordings must be dated within the contest dates - so make sure your computer date is right.:) I think everyone would agree to that, so I'm locking it :)

*** - I think that the judges should download all games previously uploaded so we get the least cheating possible. Basically we should keep an eye for file size and such.

SCORING:

*** - There are three suggestions:

A. Percentage Scoring, additive, no bonus for high rankings. B. Place Ranking, worst gets 0, 2nd worst gets 1, 3rd worst gets 2, 4th worst gets 3, etc. C. `Superstars Scoring` - 10-7-5-3-1(Did I say that right Chris?)

In all cases, any game that has no recording by a contestant gives that contestant a score of 0 for that game.

ADMINISTRATIVE HELP:

*** - I'm thinking of having a judging coordinator, where s/he assigns the judges games they will evaluate, within the boundaries of the games the judges said they could judge. The coordinator would communicate with the judges with recordings that are good or bad. What do you think about this idea? I think we're also going to need a page maintainer to keep tabs on how the tournament is going, with updates at least once a week. The page maintainer would communicate with the judge coordinator(if we have one) and myself so the right stuff comes up. :) Any help would be greatly appreciated. :)

CONCLUSION:

I know there's a lot of rules(I think I broke the record for longest post in MARP History by a longshot), and you might be confused, which I fully understand. I will be giving an example of a vote(and my official vote) in the voting thread. I'm looking forward to a great tournament. :)

Whew... this took a while to compose...

-- Gameboy9 (goldengameboy@geocities.com), June 14, 1999

Answers

gb, you wanted answers, here we go... Why a 2/3 majority? Wouldn't a simple majority do? I'll judge, as long as I can get the game rom, I can do it... (Can't tell you how I can see them, but I can) I do not agree with dropping to Mame34 and the like... Some games are only able to be run on the higher betas, and for some ppl, they are easier to run... (No major problem, as long as it is a beta that can be currently downloaded, aka betas12 and 13.) 10-15 is a nice number for # of games I could live with either B or C for scoring... (Yes, you said it right) And I would be willing to help coordinate this in any form, including Judge Coordination. you got my ICQ, just buzz me GB.

-- Chris Parsley (cparsley1@hotmail.com), June 14, 1999.

Here's a little suggestion to keep the interest level up....

Why not 'disallow' hoarding of scores. If you've recorded a score for a game upload it the day you record it - unless it was worse than a previous recording.

This will mean we can all watch people's progression on the games and know what scores we need to aim for and hopefully keep the competetion more intense as we see who's beating our scores or uploaded a rip-snorting beauty of a score !!!

BeeJay.

PS: I'm still working on my list of 5 games....... ;-)

-- BeeJay (bjohnstone@cardinal.co.nz), June 14, 1999.


my oh my, you are absolutly positively correct BeeJay!

-------------------------- ADDITIONS TO RULES:

RECORDING ETIQUETTE:

XXX - All recordings made by a player must beat his/her personal high score for the tournament. If you scored 50 points in one game, the next upload must be of a higher value. It can't be 49 points, but it can be 51 points. I hope I'm clear with this rule.

Good eye in catching that pitfall BeeJay! :)

GAME SELECTION:(This I saw after my original post)

*** - I propose that no clones should be permitted with the exception of the originals not working, or clones which change the style of gameplay. One original and a clone should not be played, only one original or one clone...... Did you get that? :) In other words, we won't play amidar that plays 20 points / dot AND an amidar that plays 10 points / dot in the same tournament. We either play the 20 point / dot version OR the 10 point / dot version. There... now I'm - hopefully- clear. :)

BTW... someone has voted the speed cheat version of pacman - the - proposed- ruling on that is it will count if it beats regular pacman in votes.

RECORDING ETTIQUETTE:(This came off an ICQ Discussion from Aquatarkus)

*** - I propose that there should be no excessive points leaching in any game. It is to the judge's discretion to determine wheater a game is points leaching or not. However, the Judge Coordinator(if we have one, and early indications are that there will be...) should have the right to overrule the judge. Maybe the Judge Coordinator should verify a points leeching claim?

---------------------------- CHANGES IN RULES:

VOTING ON RULES:(This came from Chris Parsley's reply)

*** - A simple 50.01% majority should determine the rules. If there is a tie, I will try to compromise to make everyone happy. :) I think that's better than a 2/3 majority, won't have to worry about compromising too much :)

Thanks for the idea Chris :)

Well there's a couple more things to look at, probably making things more confusing :) Thanks a ton for all of your suggestions - if you have more, you're more than welcome to give something - the more the merrier :) see ya later :)

-- Gameboy9 (goldengameboy@geocities.com), June 14, 1999.


Hmmmmmmmm,

"XXX - Voting will last about 2 1/2 weeks - it will end June 31st at 23:59 GMT - 7:59 PM Eastern Daylight Time."

I hate to be picky but on our calenders here in good ol' NZ June only has 30 days...... ;-)

I presume you'll have Zwaxy open the flood-gates asap after 00:00 GMT on 1st July once the final list of 10'ish games has been decided. I presume we'll automatically close off at 23:59 GMT on 30th September with no uploads allowed after that time - unless there are major problems with the Net access on the last day preventing those last minute uploads at the discretion of the Judge Co-ordinator.

BeeJay.

-- BeeJay (bjohnstone@cardinal.co.nz), June 16, 1999.


Speaking of Judge Coordinator - I'm going to have Pat Laffaye become the Judge Coordinator. Thanks for your help Pat!

Gameboy you nerd... look at the calander before you make a deadline next time! Uh... voting will end June 30th, not June 31st... there goes one of your days to vote... :)

I also backed up the deadline 59 minutes to give Zwaxy a bit of time to get the games programmed into the script. So the deadline is June 30th, 2300 GMT(7pm Eastern Time)

Another pitfall, the same dead eye caught it again, thanks again BeeJay!

-- Gameboy9 (goldengameboy@geocities.com), June 17, 1999.



VERSION OF MAME USED:

*** No restriction of mame version.

I'm thinking this because all versions of mame are going to be on the MARP diffs page, and the judges should be able to download the one that was recorded in their respective game with out too much trouble. This enables people who might accidentally record an awesome recording on the latest beta and wish to submit it to the tournament.

SCORING:

I like C the Superstar scoring 10-7-5-3-1, since there will only be a handfull of games to play ( if one game is easy for one person but hard on the others) that gives them too much of an advantage to lower all other persons scores, on that game, which is a high percentage of your total score. So we can still accept a cool game like galaga on not be limited to only 10 out of 100 by krogie.

-- Chad (churritz@cts.com), June 17, 1999.


*** No restriction of mame version unless the game has bugs or isn't working as it should.

forgot that exception.

-- Chad (churritz@cts.com), June 18, 1999.


I found a problem which cannot by solved by stating in the rules but if we put it in nevertheless it might prevent people from cheating.

Example: If we have two close competitors in a tournament called A and B, if in one game A is very good while B is quite low (B scored his points in other games), A could play a score just a bit lower than his top score and submit under another handle, so that B gets a lower LEADER BOARD score. ?!

The rule that you have to play 8 of 10 games to appear in the leader board already helps but still somebody could play 8 games under a fake handle and submit it. We could put in a rule to say that everyone may only take part in the tournament under ONE SINGLE handle. After all it is impossible to prove if a person is in the tournament with two handles, but putting in the rule would set things clear.

If this got already discussed let me know !

-- rough (rough@c64.rulez.org), September 04, 1999.


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