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Forum: General

     Me Again...
     
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Canadajagtress

Single Player
jagtresshotmail.com

Tue Jan 27, 2004 3:00 am   Post subject: Me Again... Not logged in.

This is a simple question really. But you know when you hit F4 it tells you something about the exit score and the amount of diamonds shown on the screen. Well I wanted to know what the exit score thing meant. As in 10T 369 thanks a bunch Jagtress.
Australia (WA)Wil

Single Player
wilamristar.com.au

Tue Jan 27, 2004 3:23 am   Post subject: Not logged in.

10T means the score you get for exiting is 10 times the time left. The 369 is the current value (last press of F4). The reading 20 and 1T means you get 20 points (bonus) for exit as well as 1 point for each time. Since I added a bonus score it made it very hard for people to work out the scoring without playing many games (and completing it many times). It was nicer to add this feature so people can ascertain if it's worth exiting. F8 also allows you to see you current high score position as well as the position if you exit (connects to server when pressed).
Finlandasarkila

Single Player
ari.sarkilahtigmail.com

Tue Jan 27, 2004 9:10 am   Post subject: Not logged in.

"The reading 20 and 1T means you get 20 points (bonus) for exit as well as 1 point for each time." Each time being a "minute" or a tick ? I think that it means a "minute". If so I guess that 2T actually means that the "minute" is devided into 2 and the faster part (finishing faster that 0.250 would five you one point more than under it ?) 10T would mean that every 50(500/10) "seconds"(approximately 6 ticks) would equal one more point ? Am I wrong or what ? Damn, bd4 time mathematics are not trivial :) The basics (just trying to determine the terms so that we can all discuss this with the same words): One bd4 minute is 500 bd4 seconds One tick is 8 bd4 seconds. That means one bd4 minutes is 62.5 ticks ... Right ?
Australia (WA)Wil

Single Player
wilamristar.com.au

Wed Jan 28, 2004 3:12 am   Post subject: Not logged in.

I guess this should be und the "high score, etc" section.. but whatever :

The scoring and time is done to be 100 percent compatible with the scoring from Emerald Mines. As such it is a bit confusing. The bottom line is that one time is 10 seconds which corresponds to 500 ticks, ie 500 screen refreshes at 20ms intervals, ie 50 frames per second (see bottom of recorded game to confirm your speed.... it will be faster if you use the fast forward key). I think the original game was at 25fps due to the speed of the processor, etc... but I made the assumption it was 50 which has made the game twice as fast !! which actually feels right for a 1024 display, etc.

Now, score.... it is confusing. Each tick is 8 screen refreshes and time (internally) is stored in screen refreshes. Ok, let's call "timeLeft" the number of screen refreshes left, then the equation for score is:

Quote:
originalDelta=timeLeft%500;
originalTime =timeLeft/500;
if(originalDelta==0) {
  originalDelta=500;
  originalTime--;
}
scoreForExiting = + originalTime*scoreForTime +
   ((((originalDelta<<7)/501)*scoreForTime)>>7);

Yep, it is confusing. But it is compatible with Emerald Mines and the main reason for writing bd4 was to find more competition for my level set. One of the keys was 100% compatibility. It's basically that except the random number generator which is based on statistics from the ROM Chip rather than the actual ROM data itself :

So, one tick is 8 screen refreshes (160ms) and 1 time is 10 seconds. Indeed 1 time is 10000/160=62.5 seconds. It does lead to some confusion but it's how it was meant to be. At least I've changed the main exit time from (for example) 9 meaning 9 time units or part of to "8:100" which means 8 full units and "100" bits/refreshes. It does mean that old scores which had times of, say "0:200" and read "1" now read "0+" in the high scores.

Canadajagtress

Single Player
jagtresshotmail.com

Wed Jan 28, 2004 9:10 pm   Post subject: M'okay Not logged in.

Confusing is right. I'll just pretend I understand and go with it. So then there are actually levels that get you more points if you don't complete the level? I fail to understand that concept.... Well at least I have people talking now. LOL. :
Germany (Mainz)Dirkimops

Single Player
dirkimopsgmx.de

Wed Jan 28, 2004 10:05 pm   Post subject: Not logged in.

Quote:
So then there are actually levels that get you more points if you don't complete the level?
There may be (very few) levels where there's an area in which you can get many points, but which you can't leave any more to reach the exit. When the exit bonus is lower than the sum of the points you can get in the "one way dead end street" (song by the German band "Fury in the Slaughterhouse"), it might be better for your score not to go to the exit.
Of course this was not intended initially, but there are many clever BD4 players here...
Canadajagtress

Single Player
jagtresshotmail.com

Wed Jan 28, 2004 10:49 pm   Post subject: grr Not logged in.

Okay so what kind of a point thing would it have to display at the bottom of the screen to know which levels these uncompletable levels are? Geez...this is confusing..... :P :
Finlandasarkila

Single Player
ari.sarkilahtigmail.com

Fri Jan 30, 2004 6:58 am   Post subject: Not logged in.

99,9% of bd4 are completeable. What Dirkimops means, there are some levels that get you more points if you go a certain route from which you can't make it back to the exit. And even if you get 0 points for exiting, the time matters in the high scores if two players have the same score. The one that completed faster wins and you can't get to the next level if you don't complete :
Canadajagtress

Single Player
jagtresshotmail.com

Fri Jan 30, 2004 6:29 pm   Post subject: Not logged in.

It makes sense now! I'm so happy. thanks asarkila...and everyone for explaining that to me. For a while I didn't even know that exisited...LOL :