When a High Score Isn't Enough

[Mr. Brow]

 

One of the things I find frustrating about high scores is trying to figure out what a reasonable target is.  The Twin Galaxies records are never going to be within reach of my time budget, and it's not always clear what to make of the scores I see in other people's tables.  How much did they play?  How were they playing?

 

Lately I've been leaning towards setting rate-of-improvement targets, but to do it really well I need to keep track of all of my scores, and that can be tedious.  Recently, I stumbled across a paper online where they showed the likelihood of achieving high scores when the outcome is just random and there's no player learning.  I spun that into a way of testing my progress on a game using only my high scores, which I explain in detail my latest blog entry.

 

Do you ever keep notes on your progress on a game, whether by high scores, all scores, or other measures?  For example, I seem to remember Galaga reporting a hit rate.

[Mr. Brow]

Also, a virtual cookie for whoever can figure out where that high score table originally came from (it’s not Pac-Man).

[VectorGamer]

1 hour ago, Mr. Brow said:

Also, a virtual cookie for whoever can figure out where that high score table originally came from (it’s not Pac-Man).

I'm pretty sure there were high score tables that didn't have initials. And then there were games that kept track of the high score at the top of the screen but didn't have a table. Asteroids was released in 1979 and had a table to enter initials.

[fiddlepaddle]

I think there may have been pinball machines that showed the high score before video games had them.

[Ramses]

I keep track of high scores in OneNote, but I usually delete the score I had previously. I like the idea of tracking your average although I agree that it would be too tedious on any game that doesn't have built in tracking. I find your shortcut interesting, but I'd still have to keep track of the number of games played. That's something I'd probably get lax on after a while - unless maybe there was a high score tracking mobile app that would let you easily tally your attempts by the push of a button or something.

 

You do have me considering adding a feature to the game I've been working on that tracks your average high scores over time.

Edited November 24, 2019 by Ramses

[Mr. Brow]

 

4 hours ago, Mr. Brow said:

Also, a virtual cookie for whoever can figure out where that high score table originally came from (it’s not Pac-Man).

Sorry, I think my question is a little too ambiguous.  I’m referring specifically to the high score table in the animation in my first post.

 

The animation is actually a composite of three pieces:  a moving pacman/ghost image, an incrementing score (the white numbers), and a high score table that I took from a particular arcade game.  The question is whether you can figure out which game I took the table from.  

 

Hint: the incrementing numbers were taken from a sped-up playthrough of the same game.

[Mr. Brow]

3 minutes ago, Ramses said:

I keep track of high scores in OneNote, but I usually delete the score I had previously. I like the idea of tracking your average although I agree that it would be too tedious on any game that doesn't have built in tracking. I find your shortcut interesting, but I'd still have to keep track of the number of games played. That's something I'd probably get lax on after a while.

You really only need a rough idea of how many games you’ve played.  The difference between the number of predicted high scores for 100 games is only one more than for 50.  In my Asteroids example, I only played about 100 games, but would have been beating the random case for even 1000 games.

 

Admittedly, even keeping a rough track can be tough if you’re spreading plays out over a long time, but if your plays are too spread out then it will be hard to maintain improvement anyway.

[FroggoGamer]

I used to keep a paper list of my scores when I was a kid, but I mostly post my scores on highscore.com. it is usually more fun to try to beat someone's score or just compare your best to others.

 

Lately though, that site has been getting flooded with trolls so I am about to go back to just keeping a personal record. 

[Mr. Brow]

5 minutes ago, FroggoGamer said:

I used to keep a paper list of my scores when I was a kid, but I mostly post my scores on highscore.com. it is usually more fun to try to beat someone's score or just compare your best to others.

 

Lately though, that site has been getting flooded with trolls so I am about to go back to just keeping a personal record. 

I hadn’t seen that site before, thanks for pointing it out.  It has a big database, which is nice, but damn that interface is awful.

[Ramses]

56 minutes ago, Mr. Brow said:

 

Sorry, I think my question is a little too ambiguous.  I’m referring specifically to the high score table in the animation in my first post.

 

The animation is actually a composite of three pieces:  a moving pacman/ghost image, an incrementing score (the white numbers), and a high score table that I took from a particular arcade game.  The question is whether you can figure out which game I took the table from.  

 

Hint: the incrementing numbers were taken from a sped-up playthrough of the same game.

 

Time Pilot

[Mr. Brow]

1 minute ago, Ramses said:

 

Time Pilot

?

[VectorGamer]

2 hours ago, FroggoGamer said:

 but I mostly post my scores on highscore.com

 

LOL at that site

 

BRB posting MAME scores using a photograph as evidence

[jhd]

 

I owned a 2600 for about a year, but I never really tracked my high scores (other than Pitfall, so I could get the patch).

 

I subsequently (1983) purchased a Coco, and I would use the blank pages at the end of the manuals to track my high scores for each game. I did this for maybe a year or two, before my collection expanded significantly beyond just cartridge games. 

 

[CapitanClassic]

I have participated in the Atari 2600 High Score Club, and I have always been interested in trying to find what a reasonably good high score is. I did run some statistics on the various participants to get HS averages, Standard Deviations, as well as min/max scores posted. I am certain that consistently scoring well in a game is very dependent upon the number of games played.

 

What I would really like is a fork/improvement to the Stella emulator that would automatically keep track of some statistics automatically within a local database that could be uploaded to a central server if the player choose to. Useful statistics would be 

Total games played

Total time played

Score

Time played per game

Resets (frustration ranking?)

Date/Time game started

All important identifying information about game (MD5, GameNumber, Diff Switch, etc)

 

From that data, you could get average score, standard deviation, estimated improvement per game, perhaps predicted next score range based on previous scores, etc.

 

It would be interesting what/if any scoring plateaus exist for particular games if a large enough set of data could be collected.