Since I have had it with al those accusation I hereby withdraw from the current tournament. So this is also a request to remove all my scores and name from the tourney.

I didn't want to leave without saying anything at all (like JSW) so here it goes.

I currently own a P166. So yes this one is too slow for quite a few games. In the current tournament there are four games that do not run at full speed, pbobble, rastan, ldrun and ssprint. When starting those games in mame34 they do not start with autoframeskip (as mame36bxx does) and the gamespeed is well below 100% (I have never used mame34 before since I started using mame somewhere in 35 beta cycle). Pressing F8 toggles between some different framerates (start, 24 fps, 18 fps, 12 fps as I recall it correctly). For example I play ldrun and ssprint at 18fps to gain a gamespeed of 100%. However in ssprint there are probably some CPU-intensive moments because occasionally the speed drops (mainly in displaying the score between two tracks and during gameplay when the cars jumps and hits the road again, most probably sound related). Why don't I play with sound disabled? Simply because I don't like it and the sound just helps you to be alerted of events happening during the game.

What triggered the whole discussion about my scores? It was simply a screen (high score table) shot of ssprint displaying a game speed of about 60% in a submission of a score of around 18000. When sending in the current score of 26000 I was asked by mail about the screen shot in the previous submission. Why didn't they ask immediately but waited until the next submission? It would have been more appropriate. Followed by a lot of discussion between the judges (and probably also on chat channels?). Occasionally some things were said on this messageboard starting with the accusation of Ben regarding e.g. my Galaga 88 recording. Yes this game absolutely doesn't run on my PC but that is simply not the one the game was recorded on.

To simply stop those accusations, to stop the discussions about cheating and because I don't feel like playing in the tournament anymore there is, in my opninion, only one action to take and that is withdrawal.

So maybe I'll be back in T3. And what about MARP? I don't know at the moment. Maybe I will also wait until there is a section for the cheat proof mame version (although I'm against the non PAUSE thing, simply because I'm frequently interrupted when playing games).

-- MvdV (cypr135@knoware.nl), December 07, 1999

Answers

Congratulations for doing the honest thing. There is no way in hell your Super Sprint recording should ever have been submitted, and it deserved all the attention it got. I find it amusing that you refuse to turn sound off simply because you 'don't like it'. What about the substantial speed increase it'll give to the game? I guess that doesn't matter when it's easier to play. Ben Jos submitted another Super Sprint score after finding it ran a lot faster without sound, why couldn't you do the same? As for the delayed e-mail regarding your screen shot, well I was only alerted to it a few days after you had submitted it. By that time you had submitted another score, probably in a fit of guilt over being caught red-handed with your framerate, but ultimately you failed to realise it made a mockery of the whole situation by getting a score of 26k using a machine of your speed (or lack thereof).

So I guess it's one down, one to go. See you in T3.

-- JSW (usagi@dingoblue.net.au), December 07, 1999.

As tourney judge the issue for me has been: is it considered cheating when someone of lesser skill uses a slower CPU to gain an advantage? The answer is absolutely YES!! However, 1) how do you prove a slower machine was used and 2) given the current set of rules how do you enforce restrictions against that type of play. Both these items will be resolved in time for T3, because an unfair playing field ruins everything. Witness at least three decent players withdrawing.

I had already made a decision regarding your ssprint recording, but I wanted to have the 6 judges take a look at this recording and confirm my opinion. That's all.

-- Pat (laffaye@ibm.net), December 07, 1999.

I appreciate your honesty....better late then never....

Anyway....still somenthing does not match to me..... I have a P200- MMX (64MB ram) and, all the T2 games run at full speed with sound.... and with some 15 icons in my tray bar ..... how could it be...!?!

Now I hope your friend Phil will follow you, and I do hope to see you both again in T3 (better buy a faster machine... :-).

Cicca

-- Cicca (cicca@writeme.com), December 07, 1999.

I follow Martin : no more tourney(s) for me (ps : I'm still convinced 10)about Martin's skillness , his marp's records on sprint1 and sprint2 proove it 20)that all players staying in t2 are not playing all games with the same speed - this is not a problem to me and anyway I 've already said before it was probably be possible nowhere else than in arcade)

-- Phil (plamat@club-internet.fr), December 07, 1999.

As a technician for a top computer company, there is more than just a few reasons why certain machines with different processors have been able to run the particular game, while others don't. For instance, whether or not you started MAME after you booted up Windows or if you did so after the machine had been on for a while will make a serious difference in CPU allocation to be able to be able to run the game at a good speed level or not. Also, it does depend on the type of video card in the system, how much RAM a system has, the CPU (processor) speed is only one piece of a larger puzzle that fits together to let you know what kind of frame rate you will get in MAME. It also depends on what version of MAME that you are doing, and if anything else is running in the system.

-- Chris Parsley (cparsley1@hotmail.com), December 07, 1999.