HSC12 Round 11: Pole Position "X+"

[+therealbountybob]

To end the first half of the season we hit the tracks for
Pole Position X+
X+ you ask? Why it's a version with some different circuits!


Downloads I think the signposts appear on the road in Fandal's version so [seems this only happens if you load the game from a DOS 2.5 disk] use homesoft's Disk #240 The ATR is double density, so if like me you have a 1050 drive transfer the file down to a real disk using APE etc. If you need help just post

Format and Scoring
Play any of the 4 races A-D below. See Post #2 for tables and scoring. NTSC scores are adjusted.

Track Selection: Press Select [F3] (you will need to re-boot to change between tracks ) NTSC users see post #8
Games Settings: Press Select [F3] to set difficulty, Option [F4] to set # of laps
RACE A - Track 8 - Malibu GP - 2 Laps
RACE B - Track 7 - Namco - 4 Laps
RACE C - Track 5 - Atari GP - 4 Laps
RACE D - Track 3 - Atari GP - 8 Laps

Cartridge only players if you want to join in play the original game (you can check the HSC Records for some of the settings and scores to beat)

Round Ends Sunday 26th 10pm UK time [TWO WEEKS]

BASIC Bonus Game

POLE 0

Download Fandal XEX

now, will it play as good as it looks?!

Let's Race!

Edited August 8, 2015 by therealbountybob

[+therealbountybob]

The Final Tables
remember to reload PPX+ to change tracks for each race A-D. Use Space to pause the game at the end of the go to get the total time.
OVERALL Race Points (1 "race point" per place for each race A-D and bonus game Pole 0. Races A-C have an NTSC scoring factor and bonus "race points" for fastest race times on both PAL & NTSC. Race D has some other NTSC bonuses. At the end of the round normal HSC points will be allocated: 1st place 12pts etc.)
Rank Player Race Pts HSC Pts

1st trbb (p) 42pts 12pts
2nd McKong (p) 33pts 11pts
3rd adam242 (n) 27pts 10pts
4th SHiNjide (p) 24pts 9pts
5th ballyalley 17pts 8pts

6th Sleepy (p) 16pts 7pts

7th Sikor (p) 13pts 6pts
8th powersoft (p) 9pts 5pts
9th roadrunner (p) 9pts 4pts

10th LidL.I.V. (n) 6pts 3pts

11th bluecat (p) 4pts 2pts

ties decided by Race C

Race A (NTSC Scores +750)
Fastest Times: (p) trbb 100"88, (n) adam242 110"80
trbb (p) 41,250 100"88
McKong (p) 41,250 101"35
SHiNjide (p) 41,250 101"80
roadrunner (p) 40,950
Sikor (p) 40,750 103"78
adam242 (n) 39,400+=40,150 110"80
sleepy (p) 39,300 57"68
ballyalley (n) 36,050+=36,800
powersoft (p) 35,600 114"36
bluecat (p) 34,950 128"46
LidLikesIntellivision (n) 33,700+=34,450 123"91

 

Race B (NTSC Scores +3750)
Fastest Times: (p) trbb 200"16, (n) adam242 231"71
trbb (p) 68,100 200"16
McKong (p) 67,450 202"78
SHiNjide (p) 65,750 209"79
adam242 (n) 61,700+=65,450 231"71
Sikor (p) 63,100 220"78
ballyalley (n) 57,500+=61,250
Sleepy (p) 59,750
powersoft (p) 58,850 245"88
bluecat (p) 52,100 DNF
LidLikesIntellivision (n) 43,450+=47,200 DNF

 

Race C (NTSC Scores+3750)
Fastest Times: (p) McKong 206"22, (n) adam242 247"77
trbb (p) 68,700 207"53
McKong (p) 68,500 206"22
SHiNjide (p) 61,350 235"17
adam242 (n) 56,400+=60,150 247"77
powersoft (p) 54,650 244"00
ballyalley (n) 44,550+=48,300
LidLikesIntellivision (n) 41,950+=45,700 DNF

 

Race D - PAL
trbb (p) 112,350 464"60
McKong (p) 110,200 471"67
Sleepy (p) 102,050
SHiNjide (p) 88,400
ballyalley (p) 84,900

 

Race D - NTSC *
adam242 (n) 67,150 DNF
LidLikesIntellivision (n) 42,900 DNF

* RACE D NTSC bonuses:
$ = completed lap 5, 1 race point, plus 1 HSC point
# = complete race, 3 race points, plus 3 HSC points

 

Pole 0
trbb (p) 9,960
adam242 (n) 7,810
ballyalley (n) 5,000
Sleepy (p) 3,720
McKong (p) 2,800
LidLikesIntellivision (n) 2,510
roadrunner (n) 450

Edited August 25, 2015 by therealbountybob
Updated

[LidLikesIntellivision]

I think I've got it right. I pressed f4 when I w

RACE A

33,700

RACE B

43,450

RACE C

41,950

RACE D

42,900

 

POLE 0

2510

Edited July 12, 2015 by LidLikesIntellivision

[ballyalley]

I just played a few races of "Pole Position X+." I like it. I have very limited experience playing this game on the Atari (although I have played the original somewhat). I used to play "Pole Position" all of the time on the C64 in the 80s. The Atari's control scheme is much better than the C64 setup. On the C64 you press the fire button to switch gears and up and down to control your speed. On the Atari you're always going full-speed and the brake is the fire button, while up and down shifts low/high gear. The Atari's controls play much more naturally. To verify this, I played "Pole Position" under C64 emulation just now. Going back to the awkward C64 method is strange and doesn't feel quite right.

 

The rules for this round don't say, but I presume that you must finish a "Pole Position" race in order for the score to count. Is that right?

 

[+therealbountybob]

The rules for this round don't say, but I presume that you must finish a "Pole Position" race in order for the score to count. Is that right?

 

No, just post any score you have at the end of your go

Pole Position X (not X+) is interesting too in that your car doesn't auto-centre, making it much harder. It seems to not work on NTSC (emulators anyway). For manual gears Atari fans could play TGACCRR

 

I think I've got it right. I pressed f4 when I w

 

... to be continued When you get to the game screen you need to press F3 and F4 to set the difficulty (Malibu/Namco/Atari) and the number of laps. Re-load the game to change tracks

 

[space]=pause, use this at the end of your go if you want the screenshot.

 

Time to start my engine!

[+therealbountybob]

All PAL scores

Race A 38,450 (101"76)

Race B 65,900 (210"03)

Race C 59,750 (231"13)

Race D 105,150 (491"43)

[SHiNjide]

My first attempts:

 

RACE A - 36300

RACE B - 62100

RACE C - 58100

RACE D - 88400 (retired at lap 7)

 

[ballyalley]

I loaded "Pole 0" and "Pole Position X+" in the Altirra emulator and they both work fine for me. However, neither game works correctly on my 8Mb Atarimax flashcart. Homesoft's disk #240 (With "Pole Position X+") loads to the main game selection menu, but the selections don't work. "Pole 0" loads on the flashcart, but only the player's car appears on-screen (you can move the car left and right, but that's it; pretty weird). Most of the time moving EXE files to a disk formatted with an Atari game DOS disk works fine and fixes any problems that I have with games loading from the flashcart. This is true of "Pole 0" when I moved it to a disk formatted with MyPicoDOS 4.05. However, I'm unable to move "Pole Position X+" from the Homesoft game compilation disk using DOS 2.0s. When I try to list the directory of the Homesoft disk, DOS 2.0s gives me Error 242 (Serial frame checksum error). I presume that the disk is non-standard format. Here is a direct link to Homesoft's Disk #240 that contains "Pole Position X+" (and six other games)

http://www.mushca.com/f/atari/index.php?dl=240

Could someone please move "Pole Position X+" from the Homesoft floppy disk to an EXE file that isn't on a disk and then post the EXE file of "Pole Posision X+" here in this thread?

[+therealbountybob]

I copied the file using mydos 4.54 (and it ran ok from this with mypicodos from my 1050)...

 

I copied the file using the emulator PPXPLUS.TXT rename the file to COM/XEX etc

 

Tables will be kept updated on Post #2 - scoring sysem may change (if McKong gets ahead of me... remember to remove this bit before posting)

[ballyalley]

I copied the file using mydos 4.54 (and it ran ok from this with mypicodos from my 1050)...

Thanks for quickly separating the executable file of "Pole Position X+." It didn't occur to me that the problem with my procudure to move the file over from the Homesoft disk to a MyPicoDOS disk was that I was using an enhanced density disk with a DOS that only supports single density. Good catch!

 

I moved "Pole 0" and "Pole Position X+" to a bootable Atari disk image that contains MyPicoDOS. I moved this "disk" over to my AtariMax 8Mb flashcart and both games worked just fine. I'm posting the ATR here, as it makes playing the games using the emulator emulator or on real hardware easier since both games are quickly available:

 

Pole 0 and Pole Position X+ (Atari 8-Bit)(with MyPicoDOS).zip

 

When playing "Pole Position X+" on real NTSC hardware, the top and bottom of the Track Select Screen is partially cut-off because it's in the overscan area. This is common issue using PAL software on NTSC softwqre. It's still quite usable, and the game plays fine after that (I'm presuming that the game itself is the NTSC version). Here is a picture of what's not totally visable when selecting a track:

 

 

As is usually the case, both of these games look better on real hardware. I expected "Pole 0" to be written in BASIC, but if it is, then it runs pretty fast and is quite playable.

[Sikor]

Race A:

Race B:

[+therealbountybob]

When playing "Pole Position X+" on real NTSC hardware, the top and bottom of the Track Select Screen is partially cut-off ...

Hopefully NTSC Players can see enough of the track # to see they have changed it - it changes pretty quickly on NTSC (select)

 

Tables Updated!

[adam242]

No way am I missing this round! I played the hell out of this as a kid on my 600xl in my parents' basement....

 

All scores / times NTSC!

 

Race A - 38600 ???? - completed , but not fast enough with camera

 

Race B - 61100 233"29

 

 

 

 

Edited July 14, 2015 by adam242

[ballyalley]

In the cart version of "Pole Position" PAL players get more time because the clock runs at about 83.3% of the NTSC speed (60Hz vs. 50Hz). Does "Pole Position X+" fix this? Or is the game just going to be much easier in PAL mode? The reason I ask is that if I crash more than once during a race then I can't finish the race.

[SHiNjide]

Some improvements:

 

RACE A -> 39250

RACE B -> 65750

RACE C -> 61350

 

[+therealbountybob]

In the cart version of "Pole Position" PAL players get more time because the clock runs at about 83.3% of the NTSC speed (60Hz vs. 50Hz). Does "Pole Position X+" fix this? Or is the game just going to be much easier in PAL mode? The reason I ask is that if I crash more than once during a race then I can't finish the race.

Almost certainly PPX+ will be much easier on PAL but hopefully we will get a few NTSC players too. The scoring will be adjusted with some extra points for NTSC too on the 8 lapper. When we played PP 8 laps before I had a go on NTSC and struggled to beat lap 5. The nearest we go to parity was PP "Marius" which was made harder on PAL but it was still easier to complete lap5/the race.

 

Tables Updated

[adam242]

Race C - 56400 - 247"77 - NTSC

[adam242]

Race D - 63900 - DNF (5th lap) - NTSC

Not a lot of room for error on NTSC with these longer races... this was with a crash on lap 2 and another on lap 5.

So I thought I'd give PAL a try:

 

Race D - 49300 - DNF (4th lap) - PAL!

 

Before you scratch your head, let me explain: I hadn't made a mistake yet (no crashes) after 3 laps (a lot of reserve time still), and the timer apparently can't handle triple-digit time reserves. When I crossed the line after lap 3, my extended time "wrapped around" and went to 7 seconds. Needless to say, I died before I even got out of the first turn of lap 4. Anyone else have this problem?

 

This game is much easier on a PAL machine (at least my hybrid) for several reasons:

 

The lower frame rate gives you more time to react.

The clock runs slower. On the qualifying lap, unless you really screw up, you're pretty much guaranteed to qualify on the pole. More bonus points.

You get to make a lot more mistakes and still make it to the next lap. You can also take a lot more time to brake and thread your way through traffic, instead of going full tilt kamikaze all the time.

If you do survive to the finish, you'll receive a pretty hefty time bonus.

 

My lap times were 60-61 seconds (NTSC) vs 48-49 "seconds" (PAL). Quite a difference.

 

Anyone else have both flavors of machine (trbb?) and feel like weighing in on this?

 

I think I'll stick with NTSC for Races A, B and C - just feels right, as this is how I grew up playing the game - but I don't know what do to about D.

[ballyalley]

When I crossed the line after lap 3, my extended time "wrapped around" and went to 7 seconds.

What a terrible bug! Too bad that you can't ask the arcade operator for your quarter back, or at least a free credit!

 

The oddest thing that I've had happen to me during a game today is I crashed just before the finish line with zero seconds remaining. My explosion crossed the finish line and I was awarded with extended play; sixty more second for being a bad driver! That was a surprise!

 

I think I'll stick with NTSC for Races A, B and C - just feels right, as this is how I grew up playing the game - but I don't know what do to about D.

 

I suggest submitting scores for both NTSC and PAL games for Race D. On a real NTSC machine I've beat races A and B with good scores, and I'm sure I'll beat Race C too (I've finished 3 1/2 laps so far), but I don't think I'll beat Race D on an NTSC. I'll end up submitted an unfinished race score for that format.

 

This is the most I've ever played "Pole Position!" I didn't expect to play this game much this round, but I'm finding the game strangely appealing.

[McKong]

Race A

 

 

[McKong]

Race B

 

 

[+therealbountybob]

McKong: (altirra) View - Overscan Mode - Normal

 

All the PAL issues are the same as in the original game, if you played last time we had the option of using the HSC9 R11 - Marius version (purple skies), which helped make PAL more challenging: fixed chequered flag graphic corruption, closely matched timers, fixing the clock zeroing bug (but was still easier to beat lap 5).

 

You will see on the tables there is an incentive or two for NTSC players on Race D. I kept the others <5 laps knowing this was hard to complete on NTSC - If we get enough players may split out the table on Race D

 

Will update the tables... UPDATED

[+therealbountybob]

This is the most I've ever played "Pole Position!" I didn't expect to play this game much this round, but I'm finding the game strangely appealing.

There's something about having someone else out there to compete with that makes some games much more playable - Pole Position is a perfect example

 

Improvements:

Race A 39,250 108"79

Race B 66,250 108"64

Race C 64,250 222"26

all PAL

& Pole 0 - 1,120

 

[edit] Small improvement on Race D: 105,400 489"37 with a bunch of crashes

[McKong]

Race C

 

 

[+therealbountybob]

Improvements (PAL)

Race A 41,000 102"68

Race B 66,250 208"64

Race D was going really well possibly first crash on lap 4 but then hit the timer bug and the game threw a wobbler when I pressed pause!

Next go with plenty of crashes 106,800 485"34

 

Tables UPDATED - split NTSC/PAL for race D and added fastest race time bonuses for both systems. If you beat the fastest race post this for the bonus point (you might not beat your score on the same go)

Edited July 16, 2015 by therealbountybob