One one credit, Arch Rivals will stop after predetermined amount of time, no matter what the score. So the scoreboard is currently measured by 'how many points you can get in 2 1/4 minutes' which is rather silly. I make a motion to change the board for that game so it is measured by

1) using a full game [not sure the number of quarters off the top of my head, I just dump a bunch in if I want to play this way] 2) Using the point difference between teams rather than an absolute score [otherwise, letting the other team score can be a strategy because you can sometimes get the ball back faster]

I currently hold the high score for both romsets, until of course Bubble notices I beat his score again. :)

Some other sports games have similar problems.

A different kind of problem occurs in golf. Unless there is a standard score actually in the game golf should be measured by 'amount under par' and be in *reverse* (so a -5 score is better than a 2). If extra coding is not desired, the same effect could be had by subtracting the score from 100 (so -5 would be 105, and 2 would be 98.)

-- jbd (jdyer@u.arizona.edu), May 07, 2000

Answers

Two other comments to add: 1) Turf Masters should also be separated into courses

2) Bubble's current Arch Rivals recording for v4.0 is invalid because it uses 2 credits instead of 1. I thought that score had looked a little high. :-)

-- jbd (jdyer@u.arizona.edu), May 08, 2000.

oh cool, thanks for the obvservations! we'll get that score changed to the 2 1/4 time score in a jiffy. i'm sure bubble accidentally hit the multipl credit button... :)

-- Chad (churritz@cts.com), May 08, 2000.

About golf scores, you should add 10 or 100 points for every hole reached and subtract the overpar score. so if you completed 10 holes with a total overpar score of -2 your score would be 102 or 1002. this is for games that don't let you play all 9/18 holes automatically on one credit.

About the point difference between offence and defense, this has been discussed in other threads and we haven't come to a clean solution, it's usually been decide that we use offensive score only since we should use a method for all sports games, but there isn't an all encompassing rule that goes for all games including offsensive and defensive score that we've found yet. Usually some games are a lot harder to keep defencive points off the board, so you'd want to use (offense-2*defence) but for most games (offense-defence) is ok.

-- Chad (churritz@cts.com), May 08, 2000.

Good thing someone noticed what I did to get that (very) high score since I didn't know myself how I passed to 2nd quarter, and been trying to repeat it ever since :) I'll delete the offending inp.

As for "So the scoreboard is currently measured by 'how many points you can get in 2 1/4 minutes' which is rather silly", I'de say that silly is to keep beating the scores when the top players have reached a tie IS silly. JDB and I shared the 1st place for 2 or 3 times (meaning we were tied in 2 or 3 different scores in both sets) and still he kept beating his own scores. To state that doing so ("how many points you can get in 2 1/4 minutes") is silly is a paradox to say the least. Overall, sports games have been classified this way for quite some time now, and unless something really annoying about this scoring system shows up, I'de say we keep it as it is.

-- bubble (bubble@mail.pt), May 08, 2000.

errr, as for the double 'is' in that sentence, I'm foreign so bare with me if you will :)

-- bubble (bubble@mail.pt), May 08, 2000.

I'm not arguing that we've reached some sort of point cap, but that the full game is much more fun than just 2 or so minutes worth. The computer gets much more aggressive in the second half of the game and starts passing the ball rapidly so it is much harder to steal.

It sucks a lot of the enjoyment out of the game to be playing with the current method.

-- jbd (jdyer@u.arizona.edu), May 09, 2000.

I would recommend against splitting Turf Masters until more people have completed it. Same goes for changing the scoring style. Right now, neither is a problem, and both changes would be real nuisances. Scoring should be as simple as possible unless there are massive tie problems (ie: off the wall, which I still haven't changed because of my #$%% cable, or Neo Drift Out, and maybe GTMR if anyone evr plays it again after our one-month burst competition)

QTQ

-- Q.T.Quazar (qan@home.com), May 09, 2000.

Concerning Turf Masters, it would be a good idea to split it in 4 games, one for each course. Pole Position has been splitted ( -fuji, -suzu,... ), so why not Turf Masters ?

-- lagavulin (darre@club-internet.fr), May 09, 2000.

The thing about arch rivals is that no competition would be raised/lowered/affected by changing the game recording mode. And to change the whole '1-credit-rule' just so that one can have fun stealing the ball off the opponent... well, just doesn't make sence. Anyway, you seem to be having enough fun recording the same game over and over as it is :)

-- bubble (bubble@mail.pt), May 09, 2000.

Let me make an analogy...it is like if all Galaga recordings were restricted to 3 stages, or chess games were always quit after the eighth move. You *can* show some skill and there can be competitiveness even in the early stages, but it is hardly as interesting as the full experience.

-- jbd (jdyer@u.arizona.edu), May 11, 2000.