HSC Season 15 Round 3: "The HSSki Winter Olympics"

[carlsson]

In the mean time, I played Tynesoft's Winter Olympics again, two games even. Charlie Chaplin compared it to Olympic Skier. Both games have multiple events, but where Olympic Skier is an arcade game made in the form of winter sports, Winter Olympics is a sports game with an overall scoring mechanism. It seems you get the most points for beating the Olympic record, which means that if you manage to beat the record in every attempt, you will rack in a lot of points. The speed skating with its rapid left-right movement is perfect for bashing on my Starplex.

 

In the ski jumping, I pushed left-right and then bashed up and fire randomly, until the skier actually took off the ramp! Once in the air, it didn't seem there was a way to control the skier, he would simply land and score by himself.

 

My personal bests:

 

Speed Skating: 00:28:20

Ski-Slalom: 1:29:00 (equal to the Olympic record after missing 3 gates)

Ski-Jump: 69.58 (meters or points?)

Downhill: still a failure, very hard to determine where the trees will occur

Cresta Run: 1:27:90

 

Total best in an entire round of playing: 11040 pts

 

[+CharlieChaplin]

Downhill was not that hard in "Winter Olympics", the trees always appear at a different edge than before, e.g. if you had two trees on the left edge (move to the right), the next two trees will be either on the right edge (move to the left) or one on the left and one on the right (move to the middle). The trees never appear twice on the left or right, think there is even a regular scheme used (like e.g. left edge - right edge - left+right edge - left edge - right edge - left+right edge or something like that).

 

Ski Jump was also easy, move the stick left-right quickly to gain some speed, at the end press the fire button to jump. When in the air move the stick either up or down, so your skis are straight (and not criss-cross) when you land. To get the skis straight is the hardest part here, since you have only one or two seconds or so to decide if you move the stick up or down (wrong decision = failure).

 

---

 

Play-tested also "Winter Challenge" and the gfx and msx are great there, but the gameplay is not always so great. In the first event (Downhill) you see your player from behind and he covers/hides most of the ski route, so you cannot see the tree trunks on your route very good; you see them so late, that it is hard to avoid them and therefore this event always ends as a failure for me, the good gfx and illusion of fast movement cannot help it.

 

Biathlon and Ski Jump had both good gfx and gameplay, nothing to grouse at. But Slalom, besides good gfx did not have good gameplay, the controls are very strict or direct here (I sometimes had the feeling as if left and right were exchanged here?) and I always landed either in the trees/forest or in the spectators and it was next to impossible for me to move the player between the flags, like I should.

 

In the last event (Bobsleigh), you have great gfx, your bob moves very fast (or the gfx give the illusion of it moving very fast), but there is no map/route indicator that shows where you are currently and where you are going or what lies ahead of you, besides this event takes very long (too long in my opinion) and you have to make three attempts for each player (unnescessary in my eyes). I played it with two players (both controlled by me) and always moved as fast as possible in the first go, but in the second and third go I crashed the bob intentionally a few seconds after the start and the program wanted me to do that event again instead of counting only the best/first go - no thank you !

 

You can also select a flag for each player at the beginning of the game and it will play the national anthem, but it will not show the flag nor play the national anthem after each event again. Maybe it will play the national anthem of the winner at the end of the game, I cannot tell, since I did not finish the bob sleigh as I should. Hmm, a little more text and this could be a review for Proc...

 

My rating: Gfx: 8-9 points, Msx: 8-9 points, Gameplay 6-7 points; total: 7.5 points !

(Gameplay is much more important to me than Gfx and Msx)

Edited March 4, 2018 by CharlieChaplin

[+therealbountybob]

OK you guys Winter Olympics we have CC just wiggle then press fire to jump! or carlssons go crazy pressing fire and up repeatedly, I'll try the latter as after a bunch of goes pressing fire he hasn't take off once

 

Winter Challenge use the radar to spot the logs, if you stay left you can ususally see them coming in pairs so you can prepare, you stay in the air a long time too

 

Will have another Ski session tonight

[+CharlieChaplin]

The Winter Olympics manual says the following for Ski Jump:

 

Controls: Joystick left and right, Fire Button - Jump

 

Moving Joystick left and right quickly will propel yor skier down the slope. As he nears the end of the slope press the Fire button for a safe, successful jump. To score maximum points gauge your take off position carefully. Too early will shorten your jump, too late and it's disaster.

 

So fire button should be enough to make the skier jump, but if you also want to move the stick up - well, it's up to you...

[carlsson]

So how long does this round last? Originally it said Sunday 10 AM UK time which has passed since long ago. Then it was said Sunday night which might mean midnight to Monday UK time meaning we have a little over 3 hours left.

[Dope]

Small improvements:

 

1. Snowmass 2:39.87

2. Aspen 2:39.13

3. Alta 2:44.85

4. Jackson Hole 2:29.78

5. Stowe 2:42.50

6. Mammoth 1:03.63

7. Powder Horn 1:05.31

8. Taos 1:04.68

[carlsson]

Ok, I played another round of White Circus. I still think this is the best of the multiple winter events games, and with a couple of improvements it would be really great.

 

Ski Jump 199.70 (previous personal best 216.05 remains unbeaten)

Bobsled 61.44 seconds

Skating 44.44 seconds (the key is trying to not slow down to a halt halfways when one switches lanes)

Downhill 59.88 seconds

Slalom 48.16 seconds (2 runs!)

 

(Unfortunately I didn't beat the built-in world records on ski jump or skating, though not very far off)

Edited March 4, 2018 by carlsson

[McKong]

Sorry i havent been more involved in this round, are we still playing? If so maybe I'll try MM tonight

[carlsson]

In principle this round should be finished, but as always the HSC is open for late scores. I think therealbountybob will need some time putting together all the individual scores and find a way to distribute HSC points based on the two main games and the half dozen multi event bonus games.

[+therealbountybob]

OK Let's have a small extension until 10pm tomorrow TUE 6th

 

 

TABLES UPDATED

 

Still time for you all to vote for in the ROUND 5 POLL

 

[McKong]

Olympic Skier 462

Edited March 5, 2018 by McKong

[McKong]

Olympic Skier 550 and i completely messed up the jump!

[carlsson]

Olympic Skier - 552 pts

[+therealbountybob]

More Manic Mogul Maniac 'mprovements!

 

Mogul Maniac

Play all the tracks apart from Bunny Hill. Combined times for both runs. Play with Moguls on and DQ off.

1 Snowmass 2:40:00

2 Aspen 2:37:40

3 Alta 2:42:72

4 Jackson Hole 2:28:88

5 Stowe 2:33:26

6 Mammoth 0:58:32

7 Powder Horn 0:50:44

8 Taos 1:04:68

 

Olympic Skier

151/109/221=481 "Brilliant" but I've still not put it all together!

getting there: 160/159/216=535 "Professional"

Cracked it! 160/167/333=660 "Amazing"

186/164/330=680 still Amazing

Edited March 5, 2018 by therealbountybob

[McKong]

Olympic skier 670

 

Gs 190

Sj 178

Dh 302

[+therealbountybob]

Olympic skier 670

 

Gs 190

Sj 178

Dh 302

Good GS score I'm going to bed now so I don't want to see you getting another 11 points or more by the morning

 

Everyone - You can clear the big mountain and the flat cloud with a good jump!

[carlsson]

Olympic Skier - 603 pts

 

What's really annoying that I played a round where I crashed before the first gate on giant slalom. Just for fun and practise I played through the other two events, and finished the downhill at 452 points! Too little to make a record on its own, but if I had done this in combination with some good scores on giant slalom and ski jump, I would be a bit over 700 points in total. At least now I know it is theroretically possible.

[Dope]

[+therealbountybob]

 

Smart Arse indeed

 

Unfortunately I'm out this evening but I might have time for a go or two

[McKong]

Couldn't get Mogul Maniac working. So played some more olympic skier. Really like this game. If only i could put three good events together in a row but i always seem to mess one up. A score close to 900 is definitely possible

Edited March 6, 2018 by McKong

[carlsson]

Yes. After some initial setup issues and confusion which games are HSC material, this round turned out nicely. We got some fierce last minute competition on Olympic Skier, we got a good amount of workout on Mogul Maniac (at least those who got it to run), we got to play test White Circus (at least those who got it to run) and some of us got to play through some previous multi event winter sports games for bonus and comparison.

 

In particular for someone like me who have grown up with the arch enemy the C64, it is interesting to find out which games have been available for the Atari and how they hold up. While Olympic Skier actually origins on the Commodore side and we rather early on got spoiled by Epyx' winter games (though the two figure skating events I can really live without) and many other winter sports games, I don't know about a game to match with Mogul Maniac, even if the 8-bit release is very rare and almost prototypic in appearance. The other multi event games by Anco and Tynesoft, of which some exist on the C64 as well, rather are complementary than essential IMHO.

 

However I'll be glad to go back to regular HSC programming, whichever game we'll play in round 4.

[+therealbountybob]

OK The Final Tables are in! I've made up the scoring so I hope this is fair to everyone - let me know if you have any complaints or if I've missed something

 

Congratulations to Smart Arse Dope for winning at Olympic Skier (I love that game) and to yours truly trbb for being the top Mogul Magiac Both excellent games, the others were fun to play despite their various idiosyncrasies (yes I did have to spell check that) if more people played this would have been a great round as these games are really designed for multi player action, thanks to those who did

 

Thanks again to Carlsson and Charlie Chaplin for the great posts on this thread We'll get back onto normal gaming in the next round in a minute or ten

[carlsson]

Winter Olympics

Total best in an entire round of playing: 11040 pts

 

I would want that score to be added to the final standings.

 

Also I think in the Ski Jump in the same game, my 69.58 meters is further than CC's 48.33 meters.. or points or whatever is counted.

 

One more... my final score in Olympic Skier was 603 points. Not that it matters in the standings anyway, just didn't want it to get nullified.

Edited March 7, 2018 by carlsson

[+CharlieChaplin]

@Carlsson: regarding "Winter Events" not showing the correct places/standing in the highscore...

 

- When I played Summer Games in the early 90s, I played it on an XE computer with QMEG-OS (alternative OS by S.Dorndorf, with highspeed/ultraspeed options, sectorcopy, monitor, freezer, etc.). All events could be played without any problem - except the highscore after each event and the final standings. Instead of normal numbers the game displayed only garbage (letters, control-chars, inverse-video chars, etc.) and chose the rankings randomly (since it could not make sense of the garbage). Alas, the program saves highscores to disk, which meant it also saved this garbage to diskette - so I ended up with a destroyed highscore on the original diskette...

 

=> If you play Winter Events with an alternative OS, it is quite likely, that the same thing happens there, a highscore with garbage and the game therefore chooses places randomly...

 

- Today, I do not own any XE computers nor QMEG-OS anymore (only XL computers with XL-OS and OS-A/B). But I do hate copy protection and so I copied a pirate version of Winter Events onto my original disk. Believe it or not, several entries of the highscore table contained garbage,while the game was/is still fully playable. You can e.g. download a version from Fandal's webpage with a partially destroyed highscore. After playing several games, I looked at the disk-sectors holding the highscore and modified it in such a way, that it displays normal (numerical!) highscores again. And this worked! Evil as I am, I used extremely long times for events that are time based and extremely low scores for events that are score based, so whenever I play the game I can beat the saved highscore in all events and save a new one with my chosen name...

 

=> Maybe you have downloaded a pirated version which has a (partially) destroyed highscore and because of that, the computer cannot sort the places and scores correctly... (just like in Summer Games).

 

However, I have not tested Winter Events with four players and my patched highscore table yet, since I am too lazy to play for four players (I always sit alone on my Atari)... maybe it works and is free of bugs, maybe it still shows bugs... (and maybe there is an error in the sorting routine of the highscore table)...

Edited July 3, 2018 by CharlieChaplin