A small request

[zlk]

Banning inps and techniques seems to be on the rise at marp. With time, I am certain more and more techniques will be banned and more and more inps will be zeroed.

With that being said, is there anyway that old inps that are banned for excessive leeching or "not having enough skill" are placed somewhere on marp in their own special area? The tips and tricks section is hardly every updated. I also don't think that would be the appropriate place for many of these inps to go anyway.

I don't care about whether these inps give leaderboard points. I would just like to see these inps archived for people to see. If someone asks "what is the outrun offroad trick" and there are no inps demonstrating it, that knowledge might be lost. Now I know for all the hardcore "TG is MARP and MARP is TG" players, they might not care about these inps because they only care about competition under specific rules. Thats fine for them, but I don't necessarily think that this is in the best interest of Marp. I view marp as a place to see many different ways of playing the games, and quite frequently the most interesting inps are not the ones that produce the most leaderboard points. If someone comes up with a clever way to score more points, I would like to see it, no matter how cheesy some may consider the technique.

Here is another example of why such a section could be useful: Maybe someone wants to play all clones of outrun in the offroad style. Maybe the player realizes that they won't score leaderboard points but would like their inps to be shown at marp for people to see. This new area would a great place for people to put their inps. You could also compete (not for leaderboard points of course) against people who want to play the game in this renegade offroad fashion.

For good reason, the 255 man foodfight trick was banned. Maybe someone did it in an inp, but I certainly can't find the inp. I would like to know how that trick is performed, and it seems like no one knows how (or cares to answer ). Someone at some time must have known how to do it, but that knowledge seems lost for now.

If you view marp as a "TG for computers," establish all the rules you want. That is fine. Lets just at least archive all the inps or put them in a special place to show future generations of marp players why the rules were established in the first place. People could also play the arcade games in the manner in they want, for no leaderboard points of course, against like minded competitors.

[QRS]

Good post, John.

I agree with you on some points and I don´t agree with some, but that´s good! Why? It is only normal with different opinions

I agree that I wanna see the recordings. No matter how much leeching, cheats, glitches or whatever it is. I like to see how it is done. It is a great thing do document them so everyone can see what is happening etc.

What I don´t want though, is that they should be on the ordinary upload page. My opinion is that they deserve on a special trickpage. Of course it is hard to judge things like this in general, and they have to be judged from game to game. After all this is a gray area with A LOT of different opinions.

The thing with banning inps etc with questionable techs has always been going on on MARP. Why? To try and get better rules for a game than the default rules. Why? It can be many reasons. Like it is too easy and a marathon game is possible (Like 5 men rules on bombjack and qbert) It can also be like Ghosts and goblins. To prevent the bugs and the endless leeching in the game (Like the stage 3 zombie leeching, and the time bug)

When I came to MARP almost all scores on gng was players that ran to stage 3 and leeched for 2 hours and then died.. Right now we have players that playes the game with enourmous skill, and shows that the leeching is not even needed to get those kind of scores

MARP is MARP btw, and not TG. It Will never be TG, nor Gamest or Arcadia, Hom, or anything else. MARP is MARP!

Sometimes rules are needed, and sometimes not. That does not turn the site into something else in my opinion.
At least we, the public votes on the rules here! Not like TG, where the staff set the rules by them self

But don´t take me wrong here.. I LOVE to see those recordings we are talking about... it is just that I think they need a better place to be uploaded at. Not the ordinary way, not the present tricks page... but a NEW place.. updated all the time!.

I have a suggestion here actually. Why not make a new section on marp? A new place in where you can upload on EVERY game (LB points or not it does not matter)??
I mean like the tournament section.. with a prefix. Like t6-paroduis etc. It will be like "tri-Galaga" (Short for trick as the prefix as an example.)

I know that this might take som effort for Zwaxy to do, (I have talked with him about it) but it sure would solve a lot of things.

The page will be updated automaticlly just like ordinary MARP.. People can add in their description what they did etc. Everything should be allowed.. I mean endless leeching, marathon, tricks, cheats etc.. Everything that might not fit on the ordinary upload page.
I would surely upload score to that section, just so other people can see how it is done etc.

The discussions about skill etc will not be that 'hot' anymore I guess, cause there will always be a place to where you can upload your score.
The ranking on the "new" trickspage might be strange, but does that really matter? You can brows through that games different trickscores to see if there is something that you wanna see etc. Hopefully the descriptions will tell us, but otherwise the confirmers and editors can help us to add in the descriptions what´s going on.

So what I propose is this (And I hope it will be discussed amongst the editors):

*A totally new section on marp (Exactly like the tournament upload)

*Nothing special about it, just a prefix to separate it from the ordinary MARP and Tournament uploads.

I think that this will solve a lot of things, and we might have less heated discussions, polls etc.

Hmm I can´t think of anything else at the moment, but feel free to back me up or flame me and tell me the negative parts of this

Regards

QRS

[Chad]

i agree with qrs, I think each game should have a "split" for tips and tricks where anyone can upload anything but it doesn't contribute to the leaderboard. I hesitate to say "split" because spliting each and every game would be pretty labor intesive, but it would be cool for each game to have a fun n' cheeky zone where anyone could upload anything (provided it doesn't hog up the server :).

This site was originally started to help developers fix bugs, and it won't help developers fix bugs (completley) if the only recordings it has are just high score attempts... the tips and tricks pages does this but it's also labor intensive for barry to add inps.

[QRS]

Thanks for the support Chad. What I suggest is not really a split, but a whole new section. I think that is the 'easiest' way of doing it. After all everything will be automatic with firstplace, second etc (ranking does not matter here though) and descriptions, search feature etc.

In the end it will be a kind of 'split' but hopefully a general one, in wich you can upload whatever you want, on whatever game you feel for , and use the most evil trick/cheat etc

QRS

[LN2]

Yep, I agree with that also. ...great post. Perhaps a feature where that "special rules" link is shown for games there could be a different link that would give you a small new window with the inps for that game demonstrating tricks or special easter eggs or banned techniques.

It makes more sense for them to be accessible there for those playing the games. The tricks and banned techniques page hasn't been updated in a long time from the looks of it.

I just hope all keep in mind as MARP keeps passing new rules that it's to make the games competitive like that excellent gng example QRS gave above. It's not with any intent or purpose to undermine someone else's scores for a game or to personally attack someone's scores.

It's unlikely we would have the competition to have those highly skilled inps for gng here if the high scores where just someone playing in that 1 stage for 20 straight hours. Odds are MARP would have archived some of these games if they didn't create special rules that actually setup a nice way to compete at the game.

Why is all of this happening now though? As far as I can tell it didn't just start now. I joined MARP at the end of last July and there were already special rules for many games. Some seem to think this just started happening the past month or so. Well, perhaps now our eyes are more wide open and sensitive to it. For me personally, the game issues I recently brought up are where I was just watching an inp to confirm the score...then saw what they did and figured this called for a vote to see if it should be allowed. ...nothing more than that. i only get 1 vote just like everyone else on the issue.

Also, to bring to the forefront an infinite leeching spot or trick etc. that makes high scores for a game pointless if the trick is allowed is not complaining.

So, let's please stop putting personal blame on others and just because something got passed by MARP that you didn't like. If you do still choose to blame them, then just keep it to yourself. Don't keep trashing those people in the forums weeks later.

Just smile, be happy.

[Francois Daniel]

Good post, John.
I have a suggestion here actually. Why not make a new section on marp? A new place in where you can upload on EVERY game (LB points or not it does not matter)??
I mean like the tournament section.. with a prefix. Like t6-paroduis etc. It will be like "tri-Galaga" (Short for trick as the prefix as an example.)

*A totally new section on marp (Exactly like the tournament upload)

*Nothing special about it, just a prefix to separate it from the ordinary MARP and Tournament uploads.
QRS

I totally agree with you. I love see new tricks, even if I think some of them must been banned in regular marp rankings. So make a new section for thes scores is an excellent idea.

Francois

[MJS]

Yes, if the uploads to the tips & tricks section are automated people will submit lots of replays showing different techniques (myself included)!

I have come up with this idea before but I was shy to ask for it

I hope it's not too hard to implement...

[kranser]

As this new page will probably be automatic, perhaps is will be possible to automatically copy (or move!) a record to this section (prefix) when an editor zeros a recording (also the description for the trick recording should state what type of trick was used - copied from current recording?).

Kranser.

[Chad]

yeah, we just wouldn't zero it, we'd move it to the new section when it exists. I think even autofiring recordings could be moved to the MISC section, since i'd like seeing some autofiring recoridngs because they could possibly get bonuses no one else could manually get... perhps we could allow multiple recordings per user per game too...

[MJS]

Check this out! (see attached file)

It's a recording with my own captions which explains a trick in UFO Robo Dangar. Use MAME Plus! 0.66.2 to playback.

We could use this variant of MAME for recordings that show tips and tricks. I think it's the best way, and besides it's not hard to write the captions!

[mahlemiut]

I've thought of making a version of AlphaMAME based on MAME Plus, and while I could compile a statically linked version, having one large DLL for the MAME core would be very convenient, saving on an extra download/upload for both MAME and MAME32. I do wonder though, about the security of the DLL, and how accessible the encryption functions would be there.

[zlk]

Is anything being done about my request? I can see that some people will want to play outrunners in outrun mode, and some wont. I also have seen two leeching tecnhiques that have been banned recently. Where are these inps going to go?