Re: Tempest Multigame (behaviour)

On Thu, 27 May 1999 10:46:10 -0700, you wrote:

>> I just added one quarter, and I had made that point earlier. It's
>> part of the un-written rules of Tempest. You must always restart to
>> get the high score.
>>
>So now the "un-written rules" of the contribute to the skill-level of
>the player?

Sure! All games have un-written rules! Did you know in Pac-man in
order to get higher scores you must eat the ghost when they turn blue?
A good player might be able to just avoid things all day and eat dots,
but the one who knows the rules gets the high score.

>When it was 1982 I remember being in arcades and seeing and "expert"
>walk up to a game, play it ONCE and blow away the top score without
>playing any "tricks". The wanna-bee's would then toil for hours and
>finally beat the guys score. I don't think that suddenly makes them
>"more skilled" than he. Sure, the "expert" could come back and blow 'em
>away again if he wanted to, but the points already been made by the fact
>that it took extra effort/time/money for the challengers to beat him...

That just shows that a low score does not prove a bad player, not that
a high score does not prove a good player, which in Tempest it does.

>Knowing the tricks for a game doesn't make you a more skilled player,
>IMHO. Maybe a better informed player, but not one that's more skilled.

Did you know that you can kill the flipper as they flip? It's an
unwritten rule, and if you don't know it, you are lacking in skill as
a Tempest player.

If you don't know to restart for the bonus points, you will not get
the high score, therefore someone that does know this is a better
player than you are. Eventually you would learn this and then you
might be a better player than him/her.

In the arcade world I grew up in, "High Score" was everything. I
could play forever on a quarter, but when if I walked away without the
"High Score" someone would always say "Wow, he's good, but I wonder
what the guy with the 'High Score' is like!"

>(I'll draw a parallel example: Asteroids. (I'll make up numbers, but
>you'll get the idea.) Player A churns through 50 waves of asteroids a
>gets 100,000 points. Player B hunts saucers forever, and then gets
>killed off on level 9, but still has 150,000. I still say that Player A
>is the "more skilled" player. Player B knew a trick that gave him a
>higher score, but that's all.)

Player B is better because he knows more about the game and has the
"High Score". Just think of what kind of scores player A would have
if he knew about the un-written saucer rule! Player A could then be
the better player!
>
>(Another example: I beat out a bunch of "more skilled" players in the
>Sega Genesis College Tournament way back when because I saw a trick in
>Columns that gave me a huge score (like 10x the closest other guy). I
>had more points, but I don't think I had more "skill"-- they were
>pulling off awesome moves and "staying alive" through raw game-playing
>power, I used a trick instead.)

Nope, you had "High Score" you were better. When (and if) they
figured out the so called "trick" (which after all *is* part of the
game), they could then be better than you. But you had "High Score"
you were better.

>Yeah, yeah... and I suppose I got "unsubscribed" from vectorlist by
>accident too... What do you know about SMTP Mr. Moore? ;-)

This paragraph is the only reason I responded, just in case there's a
tinge of doubt in your sarcasm. I'm not a vandictive guy and this
whole thread is very funny to me!

If we were in the same town I'd be having lunch with you, buying you a
beer and arguing the whole thing over a hamburger. Better yet, we
could fire up a Tempest and I'd show you what I mean!

In either case there'd be a lot of laughing and no anger!

You can check my references: Al, Ray, Steve, Joe, etc. Anyone I've met
that are also subscribers to Vectorlist, I'll stand by whatever they
want to say about me.

I've never met you, but just knowing you through your posts, I like
you and would try to talk you *out* of unsubscribing!

If someone *really* tried to have you unsubscribed, my vote would be
to have that person permanently banned from this list, no appeal.
It's not like something like that happens by accident!

And for the record I don't know shit about SMTP. The best I would be
able to do is change my "From" name in Agent to your's and send an
unsubscribe post, and if that works, then something needs to be done
about the security of the mailing list. I'm sure there are ways of
tracking people through the server names and such, maybe the list
owners can compare server trails and see if they match someone else on
the list.

Or maybe you were joking? If so, I fell for it! But just in case I
thought I'd respond...

-Zonn
Received on Thu May 27 13:56:18 1999