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What will it take to get you to play in the New Season of the High Score Club?!


HSC Important Survey  

32 members have voted

  1. 1. HSC Important Survey

    • I'm a HSC regular and will be playing most of the time
    • I'm a HSC irregular and will be playing some of the time
    • I'm a games developer who doesn't play games but should join in occasionally to see what people think of various games
    • I only use my Atari for serious business purposes
    • I'm useless at games but will still play and not drop out after a couple of rounds
    • I'm going to join in and then drop out after a couple of rounds
    • I'm great at games and am going to crush you like a fly "GAME ON"
      0
    • I will only play if there is a prize
    • I haven't got a joystick
    • What is an Atari?

  • Please sign in to vote in this poll.

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I was playing fairly regularly, but life dealt me a lot less playing time last year.  The 5200 OE HSC was more my speed at the time.  I'd like to do more this year, but the shorter time span for a round and having so many bonus games is a lot to keep up with if you've trying to be competitive with the better players at the main game.  You kind of have to put up something on both of you want to keep up with the pack; takes up a lot of time.

 

I like the way the scoring works, as it makes things competitive and interesting on the boards, but sometimes it's a bit much to keep up with.  For instance, one round we did Dark Chambers and Chambers of Zorp.  DC was a total stinker and took FOREVER to play, and then there was a whole other game on top of that, and a pretty tough one, too.  Zorp was clearly the better game, and there was some good back and forth going, and it would have been a great round on its own, but here I was stuck slogging through this other dud for an hour or two at a time, because what's the point of doing the bonus game and letting yourself get lapped on the main one?  Or there was that time we played Wargames, and we were scoring each of the 8 difficulty settings individually, plus another game on top of that.  That's a LOT of playing, and if I remember correctly, I got a huge, kind of unearned bump in the standings since almost nobody ran all those levels plus the second game.  

 

That's just a few examples, and many of the rounds were not like that.  I remember particularly enjoying the C'est La Vie round; lots of good competition on a game that probably wouldn't get much play otherwise, but turned out to be a damn fine game.  So, I definitely recommend to everyone who thinks they can play that they do so.  It's a good time.

 

If you're asking what are the barriers to people playing, though, I think it's the wide scope of the rounds.  I know it helps newbies and lower scoring players keep up, but it also makes playing casually harder.

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Good feedback everyone, thank you.

 

Would be nice to tempt you back on board Mr Trust, I've committed above to no multi-game rounds for the first 9 rounds so that's about half of the season, will see how things go.

 

The related bonus games are a nice way of exploring some additional titles that would never win a poll, last season Conquest of the Crown was alongside Crownland which I figured was not enough of a game to keep people happy for 2 weeks, and it turned out to be a good game, usually I know the games well so can decided if they are suitable on their own and know about their scoring flaws but occasionally we plump for something that has issues.

 

The scoring is pretty tight 12pts for the win down to 2pts for 11 and 12th places with additional scoring places from 3rd 10pts onwards, bonus games are typically 1pt per player. And yes I do sometimes tip the scales to make it a bit trickier for the top players to grab all the points.

 

With some of my games having over 200 downloads and Moon Patrol Redux having a staggering 900+ there must be more than the dozen people here who have said they will join in? Where are you all? :waving:

 

p.s. Tane You want prizes? Ok, prizes for the top three plus anyone else who plays in 20+ of the rounds.

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8 hours ago, therealbountybob said:

p.s. Tane You want prizes?

I like to see someone else playing, more than me playing, and I don't usually play anything, but if I play is atari. The guys should record their game and then upload the video here (embedded if you don't mind).

 

8 hours ago, therealbountybob said:

prizes for the top three

Something real... there is a guy mrkong and couple of machine-players that are unbeatable. It should be the top 30% instead of the top 3.

 

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The construction of the Dead Mouse is simple, due to the fact that every joystick made actualy uses four buttons on the 
inside activated by moving the stick. All you need to make the Dead Mouse are five momentery contact buttons, 
a female D9 conector, a six conductor cable, and a project box. You can save yourself some time and trouble by using 
the cable from an old broken joystick, or buying a joystick extension cord and cutting off one end instead of making a new cable.

Start by drilling five holes for the buttons in the lid of the project box a little bit larger then the size of the buttons, 
and one hole in the side of the box for the cable to the computer.

Next mount and secure the five buttons in the holes and pass the cable through the hole in the side of the box. 
Make a knot in the cable on the inside so the cable wont pull out.

Now solder the wire from the cable to the switches following the table below. 
NOTE: Solder to ONLY ONE SIDE OF THE BUTTON!!

       u  1 2 3 4 5  u
        \ O O O O O /
        u\ O O O O /u
           6 7 8 9


PIN #     BUTTON
-----     ------
2          RIGHT
3          LEFT
4          DOWN
5          UP
9          FIRE

Now solder pin #7 to the other side of ALL the buttons. 
This is the common or "ground" line. Put the lid on your box, and your Dead Mouse is ready to use. 
From experience, the Dead Mouse is a very poor joystick, Don't even bother to try and use it for game playing. 
It is ,however, a more profesional looking device for use as a mouse than a joystick, 
and a accurate drawing tool for MicroPainter.

For those of us that have a hard time with joysticks..

 

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7 hours ago, tane said:

The guys should record their game and then upload the video here (embedded if you don't mind).

A few times players have recorded their game, to show certain tactics. Generally I think it is far too much trouble capturing the video, not to mention that unless you can split the video signal somehow, playing a game through a video capture device will cause some lag that makes it quite unplayable. Most at least try to post a screenshot of their highscore though it is optional. Usually you already have gameplay videos demonstrating each game on YouTube, so I'm not sure what uploading more of those would add unless you're a "voyeur" who only likes to watch. Personally I'm too old for watching most e-sports and gaming videos unless those are tutorials or explaining something I need to know about the game, I'd much rather play myself which is what the HSC is good for.

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I wish I had more playtime. Now that I am a partner in the new business, I work 7 days a week, 10 hours a day.

I simply don't have time right now.

 

I would like to use an 800XL at the shop. Does anyone know of any pawn shop type software for Atari8?

Easy to use inventory type proggie or similar?

 

If you know of anything, please PM me rather than clogging up this thread.

:)

 

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On 1/16/2020 at 12:18 AM, tane said:

I like to see someone else playing, more than me playing, and I don't usually play anything, but if I play is atari. The guys should record their game and then upload the video here (embedded if you don't mind).

 

Something real... there is a guy mrkong and couple of machine-players that are unbeatable. It should be the top 30% instead of the top 3.

 

Did you miss the bit about prizes for anyone playing in 20+ rounds, don't expect a Ferrari ;)

 

McKong will be lucky to get third this season :D

 

The only category no one has voted for is "Crush You Like a Fly" :rolling:

 

HSC Action starts tomorrow, still time to vote in the Round 1 Poll

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  • 5 weeks later...
On 1/11/2020 at 5:34 AM, TGB1718 said:

I have same issue with joysticks, but I can use a joypad, I bought one of those USB ones that look like

a PS1 joypad, used an Arduino Uno with a USB HAT, wrote a little software, made a 9 pin cable to hook it

to my 800/130XE and it works a treat.

 

Where'd you get the DB9 DSUB plug? I want to make a couple of my own joysticks too.

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This is what I used, I already had a few of these as I used to make Centronics Printer Interfaces for friends, that plugged

into the joystick ports, as I din't have any Centronics Printers any more, I just cut one of the 9 pin D's off and used that.

 

You can see from the photo, I got them for Radio Spares, (RS brand mark).

 

You can get them easily on Ebay, but they look like solder or crimp only

IMG_20200225_163116.jpg

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I have looked into HSC in the past, but it just seems like a lot of work for all but the most hardcore. Why not just have a game of the week, pin it to the top of this forum (not a subforum) and post the results at the end of the week? Anything with multiple "rounds" is a turnoff for anyone who would like to play casually. 

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15 hours ago, BoatofCar said:

Anything with multiple "rounds" is a turnoff for anyone who would like to play casually.

Strictly speaking, you don't have to participate every week. If the final standings at the end of the season don't matter, you can very well cherry pick the rounds when we're playing a game of your liking and skip the other. However just like most sports, it is an added challenge who is better in the long run, across multiple different games which is why the results are accumulated for each round.

 

I know people in the AtariAge group on Facebook, in particular regarding the 2600 are running their own high score competition separate from the HSC ran in the 2600 section on the forum. It can seem a little confusing that the FB group related to AA and the main forum are so separate from eachother, but that is how it works. I'm sure there is some overlap of active users but I feel that the people posting scores on FB are not the same as those hanging around the forum.

 

Of course the A8 community wouldn't have to break out of the AtariAge forum in order to play a more casual high score competition, one that restarts from scratch every week but then again who are interested in playing in it? This year the HSC has received quite a lot of new and returning blood so we're well over 20 participants still by round 3 in late February. Many have voiced that as long as we stick to 1 or maximum 2 games per round of two weeks, they will remain. A parallell high score competition running one game per week would compete for attention with the longer term running HSC, compared to if you simply join the HSC for those rounds you feel for playing a game. After all, you are challenging yourself for personal bests just as much as you are competing vs other forum members.

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On 1/15/2020 at 3:14 PM, therealbountybob said:

Good feedback everyone, thank you.

...

I've committed above to no multi-game rounds for the first 9 rounds so that's about half of the season, will see how things go.

 

so far 3 single game rounds and 25 players or more so join back in BoatofCar, TickledPink and others - you can post scores for missed games ;) Like carlsson said for causal play just ignore the current standings for the entire season and compete in any rounds you like, it's just fun playing the games and most of them hold up very well indeed.

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4 hours ago, therealbountybob said:

so far 3 single game rounds and 25 players or more so join back in BoatofCar, TickledPink and others - you can post scores for missed games ;) Like carlsson said for causal play just ignore the current standings for the entire season and compete in any rounds you like, it's just fun playing the games and most of them hold up very well indeed.

That's great! I plan on submitting scores this weekend. 

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