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Serious

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Posts posted by Serious

  5. Posted

     

    I just got an O2 from Mark, and I wanted to comment in this thread so I can follow it easily as there is so much good info here.

     

     

    Congrats on your purchase! I think you're going to have fun with it, and there is a nice community on videopac.nl that I think you'll enjoy participating in.

     

     

    I tried to register with videopac.nl but registration is disabled at the moment.

     

     

    This kept me off the forum for a long time, but it turns out that you can still register.

     

    The registration form is always disabled due to spam, but the site does accept new members.

     

    This post tells you how to register: http://videopac.nl/forum/index.php?topic=1931.0

     

     

    Where is a good place to find manuals online? I have the Multi-Cart but I'm so new to this system that I don't know some things - like what the codes you can type in the games are for. I need to read some manuals.

     

    Good question. This site has Videopac (European versions with alternate titles) manuals: http://www.bermuda.ch/balduin/videopac/videopac.html

    If you mean the dip switches on your cart, I believe there should be a list that came with it. This wasn't obvious to me on the first one I bought.

     

    Is there a killer app homebrew that everyone kills themselves for? Like a sequel to a really popular original title or something like that?

     

    I wouldn't go so far as to say that there is one must-have homebrew.

     

    My personal favorite homebrew is Mayhem. It is a simple but extremely fun and addictive game. That game and others are available from the publisher here: http://www.revival-studios.com/?page=41

     

    The newest release (available for the first time today) is Wildlife, which you can purchase from 2600 Connection here: http://www.2600connection.com/features/wildlife/features_wildlife.html

     

    Here's a complete list of the released homebrews and new releases of previously unreleased games: http://videopac.nl/forum/index.php?topic=191.0

     

  9. Posted

    @ Serious -- I see there's a lot that goes into running a site like this that one wouldn't expect from the gitgo. Don't take my comments as criticisms. You're obviously doing a great job, and the site keeps getting better!

     

    Thanks, Gorfy. I very much appreciate your supportive comments.

     

    I'm always appreciative of any feedback you and others have. I really want to make High Score something special, and all of the feedback I get from you and others is very helpful in guiding me on what I should be working on next, and also giving my ideas for improvements that I never could have thought of on my own.

     

    One of the most challenging aspects of doing the site is when I get conflicting feedback where very strong opinions are involved. There are a few individuals who have very strong opinions of what High Score should be (which they express to me privately), and they are not at all in agreement. In situations like this, I go back to my original vision that motivated me to invest in creating the site in the first place, and I let that guide me.

     

    I have many feature improvements in mind for the future that I plan to incorporate (in addition to changes based on the feedback I get from you guys) that I'm excited to get done. It is probably going to be a while, but I think you all will like what I have planned.

     

    I'm also building relationships in the gaming community that I expect to lead to increased participation in the site and increased competition in multiple categories, which will help with the main feedback I get from users all of the time (which is that more participation is the main thing that will make the site better).

     

    I'm 100% committed to this project and I'm more excited than ever about the potential for it.

     

    Please keep the feedback coming! It really does help.

    • Like 1

  10. Posted

    Speaking of Cosmic Bugs, what's with the 2 million insignificant variations for which somebody posted scores? I find this to be a nuisance, as it clutters up the site with boring, needless repetition. Can a limit be placed on these little variations?

    One of the things that has been somewhat problematic is newer games that present scores by level. The first time this came up before now was with Candy Crush Saga, but it is a common trait of many modern games.

     

    In the case of this game, it does provide a cumulative score, but there are players who compete based on percentage complete per level.

     

    In the case of these submissions, the player had already achieved these scores when they were participating on other sites, and wanted to share their records relevant to these games on High Score. The submitter of these scores has himself pointed out to me the problem I have with how these scores are organized and presented to the site's users, and has made constructive suggestions on how I can better organize and present these types of scores.

     

    On Cosmic Bugs, it has been argued that High Score should not accept these percentage complete scores since their is a cumulative total (though that cumulative total is not the sum of the percentage complete achieved on each level). The primary concern I have with disallowing these types of submissions is that it would essentially alienate users who already play/compete on newer games.

     

    Because these scores were submitted in bulk, as a result, we are all running into them over-and-over in the voting, which isn't very fun or interesting (in my opinion).

     

    I have been planning for months to make it possible for the user to set preferences or make other choices on what kind of games they see while voting. This wasn't a high priority for me previously, but it is near the top of my list now.

     

    I am also working on ways to group these types of scores into a table, so a person can search for "Candy Crush Saga" (or whatever) and see all scores for all levels of that game. (As well as every game setting for 2600 Asteroids, for example)

  11. Posted

    Ouch.

    I just erased cookies I used to log in to my account in Highscore.com.

    Those cookies had my password and I hadn't to type it everytime, so I also forgot my password. :dunce:

     

    What a bad time to show my stupidity. :dunce: :dunce: :lol:

    No worries. I'll get in touch with you via email to sort it out.

     

    Once I can get the site to send emails, I'll build a password recovery method.

  12. Posted

    What if it were your role to be a "gatekeeper'' for the repeal vote? In other words, someone would have to contact you about a particular score and state the reason why it is believed that the score should be rejected. If sufficient reason is given, then you can institute the repeal vote along the lines that Lid describes?

    I'll think on it. I am trying to keep myself away from the role of being directly involved in score acceptance (outside of my 1 vote), as this is supposed to be peer review. I might have to do something like what you are suggesting until a better process can be devised.

  13. Posted

    If you don't plan to improve number of votes too much (currently it is 21, I guess)

    My plan has been to keep increasing the minimum number of votes needed as the site grows. I would like for the minimum number of votes to be 100, as this will mean more eyes looking at each score and more opportunities for voters to spot issues and leave comments while there are still plenty of people left to vote.

  14. Posted

    This is something I've been giving some thought to, as well:

     

    What to do with scores where some type of rule violation or cheating is found after the score is accepted through voting. I don't have any ideas on it yet that feel like an ideal solution.

     

    I don't view it as my role to remove these on my own, but the community should probably have a means to correct issues like this.

     

    What do you all think of allowing a user to change their vote? Do you think this would be a good solution? Or would it be too likely to be abused?

     

    Some changes I already plan to introduce:

     

    1. The rules that are displayed to the submitter at the time of submission will also be displayed to voters on the voting page. I'm thinking that some of the voters in this situation may not have been aware of the rules prohibiting cheat codes.

     

    2. User Legit ratings below a certain amount will be highlighted in another color on the voting page. (Maybe orange if below 80, red if below 70).

    • Like 1

  15. Posted

     

    I'll be sure to test mine right away. There is a 14 day return policy, and this is a Top Rated Seller, so they'll want to keep you happy.

     

    Forgot to mention that I requested that the original box not be used as the shipping box, and it seemed as though they were going to use a separate shipping box anyway.

     

    I verified that my replacement one is working last night.

     

    From my limited (so far) experience with this thing: If the cables aren't snug at the connection to the joystick, you may not get a response on all directions of the joystick, but there are screws on the connections to the joystick which should prevent that from happening.

  18. Posted

     

    Probably my over all favourite is Mines of Minos. I only recently discovered this and love the game and the art and the into is very evocative:

     

    “Something terrible has happened in the mazelike Mines of Minos. The smoothly running robot operation has been interrupted by an invasion of monstrous alien life forms! Aliens stalk the corridors of the mine; only a single robot survives to battle them. Desperately he struggles to find and assemble pieces of his fellow robots scattered around the mine while avoiding the pursuing aliens. If he can assemble a large enough robot army, he can battle the aliens to fight his way down to deeper levels of the mine and even destroy the alien command center at the lowest level. But if the aliens catch him he is doomed and his only weapon against them is his stock of time bombs. Can you avoid the monsters and assemble enough robots to expel the alien invaders from the Mines of Minos”

     

    I love all of the CommaVid art. (Well, not the original Cosmic Swarm, but everything else.)

     

    I recently posted the cover art from that game on my Instagram, and it got a ton of likes.

  20. Posted

    Bump to say that one of these is on its way to me. There's an eBay seller who seems to have found a bunch of these. She's selling them for $100 shipped, new in box. She's sold six of them now. Not sure if she has any left, but if you are looking for one you should search for it. This seller is from Colorado just like the seller mentioned earlier in the thread. These must be some kind of warehouse or storage locker find.

     

    Here's her seller page: http://www.ebay.com/usr/2010buybackgames

     

    I'm not sure I've got room for this beast, but I've been so fascinated by them ever since this thread.

     

    I bought one recently. I believe it was from this same seller. First one I got had some issues (though it was cosmetically perfect). Working out an exchange was awkward, as they were a bit disorganized, but there I was eventually able to return mine for a replacement.

     

    I haven't actually had time to try out the replacement, yet, to make sure it is working. I'll try to do that tonight and will report back on this thread.

  24. Posted

    Hi everyone,

     

    I'm doing some cleanup of the difficulty settings in the highscore.com database, aided by some fellow AtariAge members.

     

    When reviewing the Dragonfire manual, it makes no mention of the use of difficulty switches, so we assumed (at first) that his meant that the difficulty switches have no effect on this game.

     

    However, if you look at the scores on the game with difficulty set to A and B, there is an obvious difference:

     

    Dragonfire (Atari 2600 Expert/A)

     

    4,300 killersquirel <<

    2,930 Serious

    2,810 S.BAZ <<

     

     

    Dragonfire (Atari 2600 Novice/B)

     

    8,780 killersquirel <<

    7,280 heywoodfloyd

    4,300 S.BAZ <<

     

     

    So, two of the same players scored almost twice as much in difficulty mode B than mode A.

     

     

    I took a look through the source code, and found this:

     

    ;
    ; DELTA FIREBALLS
    ;
    LDA FPCTL ; DO FIREBALL SPEED WITH WAVENO E DIFF
    ASL ; SHIFT DIFFICULTY TO CARRY
    LDX PLAYNO
    BNE SKIP34
    ASL
    SKIP34
    LDY WAVENO
    LDA #0
    ADC FBSPEEDS,Y
    STA T0
    LDX #NUP0S-1
    DEFBLOOP LDA P0YS,X
    CMP #DEAD
    BEQ NEXT05
    ADC T0 ; FIREBALL SPEED
    IF PAL
    CMP #$95+15
    ELSE
    CMP #$95
    ENDIF
    BCC OKXX
    LDA #DEAD
    OKXX
    SKIP18 STA P0YS,X
    NEXT05 DEX
    BPL DEFBLOOP

     

    Without understanding the routine here, based on the comments, it appears to me that the fireball speed may be different based on the difficulty settings.

     

    I would appreciate any insight from someone who can decipher the source, or who knows the game better than I do.

  25. Posted

    Every SI needs the Braze kit. It just piggybacks between the 8080 and the pcb, so you keep all the original hardware and it can always be removed.

     

    Hard to diagnose your monitor issue, though if everything's original a cap kit is always a good start. You might want to find Randy Fromm's troubleshooting flowchart for the Motorola or Wells Gardner in your machine. Have you checked all your voltages?

    Ok. You ang my wife have talked me into doing it. Plus, the opportunity to have Lunar Rescue running in my beautiful Space Invaders Deluxe cabinet is too much to pass up.

     

    Checking the voltage would probably result in my destroying my cabinet and blowing my arm off. I'm too much of a clutz to trust myself with a job like that.

     

    What I think I am going to do is buy the kit, then get a repair guy out here to look at my monitor issue and install the kit for me. I also have a somewhat unresponsive left button on it, and a few other quirks, so I think it is time for a tune-up.

     

    BTW, I watched a video last night on Youtube of someone demoing this kit in a SID cabinet, with a reflection of Zaxxon on the glass. I figure that has to be you.

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