Re: Tempest Multigame (behaviour)

On Thu, 27 May 1999 14:04:26 -0700, you wrote:

>> 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?
>>
>*sniff* *sniff*? What's that smell? Is that the smell of sarcasm in
>the air? ;-)

Who me???

>> 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.
>>
>Stack overflow. Core dumped in Zonn tripple-negative parser.

Nah read it again. A good player who leaves with a low score doesn't
mean he's a bad player, he just didn't feel like setting a high score.

On the other hand a bad player will not leave the machine with a
700,000 point high score, regardless of any "Bonus Point" extra
quarters he puts in, at least not in Tempest.
>
>> 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.
>>
>That's not skill.

It absolutely is skill! It takes many rolls of quarters to get that
move down just right. Especially at the higher levels! The timing is
very critical, and there's no way you can make it past RED without
doing this a few times, since with the introduction of the "hummers",
you can no longer simply spin away. That would be like saying "Firing
at an approaching bullet is not skill, your just cheating, a
'skillful' player would not have to shoot at the bullets!"

>Does the guy that pushes the "go" button an a CNC
>milling machine that checkers a gunstock at 100 lines per inch have
>better "skill" than the craftsman that carves 90 lines per inch by hand?

I don't know, how is he at playing Tempest?

>No. He has a "trick". Is the engineer that copies the design for an
>amplifier out of a book more skilled than the engineer that can design
>the circuit from scratch? No. Shortcuts again.

But which engineer is a better Tempest player?

Talk about changing the subject! Everything I say *only* applies to
Tempest!! I can think of quite a few Jamma games where you can buy
your way through the whole game. I played some sort of shoot 'em up
at one of those "pay three bucks and play for free places", when you
died, you just pressed start (it was on free play) and continued where
you left off. You could kill one bad guy per quarter and make it
through the game! With enough money anybody could finish the game!
That doesn't apply to Tempest, or milling machines for that matter!

(Milling machines! Hee hee!)

>> Player B is better because he knows more about the game and has the
>> "High Score".
>>
>He's got a higher score. If you get 255 lives in Sinistar and blow away
>every high score on the machine as a result are you the most skilled?
>If the next guy accidentally bumbles into the same bug and beats *your*
>score is he more "skilled" because he has the high score now?

Maybe if he can repeat it. Or maybe High Score isn't an indicator of
skill in Sinistar. It is in Tempest.

>Your recent message to the VECTORLIST list has been
>rejected for the following reason:
>
>Only list subscribers may send messages to this list."
>
>Weird, eh?

I wondered how you even knew you were unsubscribed.

>> 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!
>>
>Oh, yeah-- don't get me wrong. I'm not even wound up about it. Barely
>a ripple on the old blood-pressure. ;-) I was joking about it with Al:
>" I often wonder what would happen if Zonn and I ever got in the same
>room together. Either we'd click immediately or we'd get in a fist
>fight over what animal the stain in the carpet most resembles. ;-)"
>(once again, totally kidding...)

Most likely both! ;^)

All it comes down to is what you and I consider "Skill" you consider
it technical prowess. I consider it the ability to get the "High
Score", kinda of a "Beat the Programmer" mentality, if he left the
ability to hunt saucers in the software, hey, that's not MY problem!

The games I like are the games were both "Technical Prowess" and
"Highest Score" merge. Tempest is one of those. Even if you stumble
across the "start on any level cheat" in Rev 1 Roms, you are not going
to increase you high score by more than a couple of 100,000 points,
which is not going to do squat at beating the God of Tempest "Hector
the Horrible". He didn't get 1,700,000+ points by putting it in free
play mode! He also didn't get it by the bonus restart! The last
place you can restart in Tempest is like level 81 (or around there)
and the bonus is only something like 800,000. Hector made something
like 1,000,000 points with no restarts! (I'm sorry I had to genuflect
at this point.)

Ok, so here's the REAL honest to god reason I've been fighting against
editing the EAROMs. I've just started a new job and it turns out
every engineer working here LOVED Tempest. So I'm going to put one in
the lunch room, and I want to put the multi-game hack in it.

These guys are a bunch of hackers, if there's a way to set the EAROM,
these guys are going to find it, and any high scores are going to be
meaningless at this point. So whether you put it in, or leave it out,
I'm going to have to remove it. You could do me a favor though and
write down the address of the call to set the EAROM, so I can NOP it
out!

-Zonn
Received on Thu May 27 17:04:35 1999