This goes out to gameguru in particular (rapidly approaching 20k :), and German Krol, who told me a few posts back that he only had ONE autofire recording (herbiedk). Please remove your autofire recordings. It was decided a long, long time ago that they were unfair and did not accurately simulate playing an arcade game to your fullest potential. I don't think either of you needs the extra advantage.

In case you're wondering, GK, your blasted.inp showed up as autofire.

-- Q.T.Quazar (qan@home.com), January 24, 2000

Answers

here come my quick draw mcgraw responses again... all i do is read this board so what do you expect!

Autofire recordings were decided to be unfair in tournament play But I don't think it says anywhere that they are unfair on regular marp; I think this has to be an issue that must be voted on like any other banned technique and it hasn't been.

I realy detest what game guru has done, using his braizen autofire techinque to get him into the top3. But, there are individuals who are just too "old foegy" (myself included) to rapidly bang on the keys for hours at a time. I would vote against autofire being banned at marp, but if there was a tgmarp: i would ban it for recordings that used tgmame; where a more true arcade competition can take place.

-- Chad (churritz@cts.com), January 24, 2000.

This is getting silly, people use autofire because they just can't be bothered to press the buttons!

Autofire on most games gives a disadvantage, the shots come out in bulk, this messes up the timing..

R u guys saying that I cheated to make it to number 3 in the leaderboard?

That took a lot of hard work and dedication......

I could get any of the scores I achieved without autofire..

Excluding Hypersports ;-)

Later dudes!!!!!!!

Chill out................

The grass is green and the sun is shining..

http://wkweb5.cableinet.co.uk/games.guru

-- game guru (games.guru@cableinet.co.uk), January 25, 2000.

People use autofire because they have to, that's it. Either because their arm hurts or because it gives them an advantage (not to have to press the buttons all the time...etc). If Game Guru could have made the recordings with out autofire Game Guru should have, or AT LEAST stated they were using autofire (never once does a recording mention autofire was used.) Game Guru should have noticed that other players weren't using autofire, and competing against people who aren't using autofire by using autofire is pretty lame. Very Un-Guru like anyway.

-- Chad (churritz@cts.com), January 25, 2000.

Well... here's what I got when I tested Game Guru's most recent recording - shadow dancer using Chad's autofire tester program.

p = 10 f = 10 shadow.inp Bit# frames:on/off Presses BPresses Bursts highVar LowVar 14 35270/8518 8517 7838 125 0.00 0.000 47 35030/8758 8757 55 1 0.29 0.000 72 27141/16647 8758 8757 1 0.09 0.089 73 28934/14854 8758 8757 1 0.21 0.212 74 26369/17419 8758 8757 1 0.01 0.011 75 27582/16206 8758 8757 1 0.13 0.127 76 26272/17516 8758 8757 1 0.00 0.000 77 26283/17505 8758 8757 1 0.00 0.001 78 8504/35284 8503 7824 124 0.00 0.000 79 27332/16456 8758 8757 1 0.11 0.106 107 8757/35031 8756 64 1 0.00 0.138 111 8757/35031 8756 55 1 0.00 0.161 142 8514/35274 8513 7743 121 0.00 0.000 171 8757/35031 8756 64 1 0.00 0.062 206 8530/35258 8529 7807 126 0.00 0.000 235 8757/35031 8756 64 1 0.00 0.015 239 8757/35031 8756 54 1 0.00 0.018

shadow.inp MOST LIKELY IS USING AUTOFIRE!!!!!!!

... in a lot of cases... oh yeah... that would mean a disqualified game in the tournament... period.

In comparison, let's look at BBH's shadow dancer recording.

p = 10 f = 10 shdancer.inp Bit# frames:on/off Presses BPresses Bursts highVar LowVar 14 3554/40238 474 12 1 0.47 0.639 15 6656/37136 1250 56 4 0.27 0.426

shdancer.inp

That means BBH did NOT use autofire.

Nothing feeds back when I test Barry Rodewald's recording in the same said game.

What do you think? Disqualify this game?(Which we can do now...)

-- Gameboy9 (goldengameboy@yahoo.com), January 25, 2000.

I DID NOT USE AUTOFIRE ON THAT SHADOW DANCER SCORE!, so I think u should check your information, jesus... :-(

-- game guru (games.guru@cableinet.co.uk), January 25, 2000.

Also I did not use auto on the Shinobi score that went up after that!

You only need to watch the playback on shadow dancer to c that I was tapping the buttons, anyway Ive plugged the old SideWinder back in so no one can hastle me anymore.... :-(

-- gameguru (games.guru@cableinet.co.uk), January 25, 2000.

No one's accusing you of cheating, Game Guru, but we ARE accusing you of taking unfair advantage of the situation. No score that ranks in the top 3 for a particular game should be using autofire, period, because they disadvantage every score beneath them. Not having to press buttons at all/as frequently gives A LOT more time to focus on movement, as well as giving extra time to analyze the game world. Saying that you're too lazy to press the buttons is not a valid excuse.

But if you need more arguments:

1) Your scores, as stated above, impact other players who have scored less on the same game but played without autofire.

2) You are a Top 10 player. Using autofire is a bad example for the new players coming to the site.

3) You failed to label ANY of your games as using autofire, and for this reason, it is only just recently that many of us have learned that you were using autofire

4) Using autofire violates the spirit/and or design of a game. Just look at N. Kosaka's 'skill' on D-Con.

5)Many games gain OBVIOUS advantages from autofire.

Under current regulations at MARP, noone can force you to delete your recordings. That is why I asked you to delete them, instead of telling you (read the original post). I think that if you delete those recordings where you feel you obviously gained an advantage (and you must consider any and all vertical or side scroling shooters here) then we can continue on at MARP with no changes to the autofire ruling. However, if you refuse, I will personally put the autofire matter to vote this week, and then one of the siteop gods can regulate it.

You are, simply put, the fastest rising player at MARP ever. I don't think you need to skew the playfield to your advanateg, and I'msure you can quickly make up the points lost.

Sincerely, Q.T.Quazar

-- Q.T.Quazar (qan@home.com), January 25, 2000.

I will never use auto fire again from this point!!! :-) As for deleting scores!! It must have took nearly a year of hard work to make the top3 .. There is no way I could run through all my scores and delete any with an unfair advantage!! If anybody wants to E-mail me a list where an advantage is gained, please do so..... Didn't mean to sound angry, it's just there is no official ruling on this... Also there are other players using autofire who r within the top20!!

AUTO FIRE SHOULD BE OFFICIAL BANNED ON THIS SITE!!!!!!!!!!!!!

LATER!!!

-- game guru (games.guru@cableinet.co.uk), January 25, 2000.

Game Guru's recording of Shadow Dancer(Shanobi?) doesn't playback, when i last looked at the inp it was just a bunch of 00's and FF's and did not playback. The autofire detector can't work on a file that doesn't playback.

This is to say that Game Guru probably did not use autofire on these inps...

Perhaps there should be a vote wether or not autofire recordings should be accepted or banned as a banned technique? Q.T, can you find it anywhere on the marp page that says autofire is not allowed? if not lets vote.

-- Chad (churritz@cts.com), January 25, 2000.

Now that i've straigtened out that Mame36b15 has a different inp format, i've compiled a new autofire detector, it now reads Game Guru's Shadow Dancer and co recordings as NOT using autofire (i apologize to GG for not knowing about the new format which lead it to believe autofire was used in this recoring) though Game Guru's m36b15 Dragon Saber as USING autofire.

I've forwarded the new detector to all the judges, hopefully the inp format won't change terribly much, so far there are only 4 different non analouge formats including tgmame's format.

-- Chad (churritz@cts.com), January 25, 2000.