Sonic and Sega Retro Message Board: theyogwog - Viewing Profile - Sonic and Sega Retro Message Board

Ritz, on 27 December 2014 - 04:46 AM, said:

Well, there's this.

And thanks again to everyone, you are all based.

Thanks guys but I just wanted to say, nevermind, I found a way. It involves rebounding off a Flybot 747, which must be lured there from fairly far away. It's actually somewhat tricky because of the way they're programmed. If you get too close, they go into a dive, and then go back up to their initial height. However, it's also possible to lower their height by letting them slowly chase you from nearly the edge of the screen. That's probably the only possible way to get up there "legit"ly.

doc eggfan, on 25 January 2013 - 07:51 PM, said:

I have been thinking about this a lot recently as well, believe it or not. I wouldn't mind if special/bonus stages and the 9:59 bonus were excluded from the calculations as I don't think anyone watching really wants to sit there for the huge amount of extra time that would add to a video of such a run. I agree that no deaths should be a rule too to prevent farming enemies for points etc.

KingofHarts, on 26 January 2013 - 10:59 AM, said:

But wouldn't that just encourage players to constantly strive to finish all of the levels as quickly as possible no matter what? That seriously diminishes the value of having interesting level design since the player will never have to pay attention to anything that isn't relevant to finishing the level as fast as possible to get a high score. That blurs the line between score run and speed run, which are (and should be) two different things with two different objectives.

The consequence of having a static time bonus scoring system in a score run, is that there is variety in ways to play the levels to get the highest score. It makes sense to finish short levels quickly to get the 50,000 or perhaps even 10,000 point bonus while on longer levels where that's just not possible, it makes sense to take a little more time collecting rings. I think there must be an ideal way of playing those longer levels that optimizes your score. There should be a point where the opportunity cost of going out of your way to get rings outweighs the time bonus, and vice versa, so finding that balance would be ideal.


Personally, I've noticed that on the routes I take through levels my rings tend to correspond to my time, if not in actual values then at least numerically. That is, at say ~1:20 I would have roughly 80 or 120 rings, and so on. I really feel like they have designed the routes to try and match rings with time, and used that as a guide to determine the pacing of the levels. Also even many of the longer levels (acts) in the game, I've found, are not unreasonable to complete before the time bonus drops to only 100, even if you don't attempt to strictly blaze through as fast as possible. Sure, in those cases you probably still get a higher score by really taking your time and getting everything, but for what it's worth from a viewer's perspective it would probably make for a less entertaining video.

I just want to share briefly something about backgrounds I noticed when I was playing Icecap Zone the other day:



You can see, it's a really nice transition from one background to another within the same level. There's the icy, cavernous background and the arctic outdoors background (perhaps the best background in the game imo, btw), smoothly separated by the icy wall pseudo-background. It's little touches like this, that tend to go unnoticed but really add a lot to the sense of immersion within a game. For me, they definitely helped make this one of the more distinctive, memorable levels. Angel Island also stands out in my mind for its effective use of backgrounds to add to the level as a whole.

AerosolSP, on 19 December 2012 - 12:07 AM, said:

You just need to learn some patterns
http://nrchapman.com/pacman/
Anyway, according to this the first time the effects last less than 1 second occurs at the 17th board, or the 5th key. Then on the 18th board it lasts for 1 second, but from then on, from boards 19-256, there is no longer any noticeable blue time from the power pellets.