Tournament: Vector War VIII (10th Nov - 17th Nov 2018)

[D-Type]

What a great tournament! More competitors, new games and lots of fun 

Just for fun, I punched in the results into my tournament system that I built in 2006 for the UK Pinball Open, which has been used for tournaments in many countries since then, for hundreds of players each time. Generally, these tournaments have "Play X pinball machines from a pool of Y available" with 6 from 12 is a common number, just like Vector Wars.

With this tournaments system, you wouldn't be able to enter >6 scores, so I removed the worst scores from each player in specific order, recalculating the overall scores after each removal and came up with the following screen dumps, one for the overall positions, a couple for sample scores across machines (some scores removed, no more than 6 per person!) an a chart that explains the score function a bit more:

(NOTE There is a BUG: scores of the same value get ranked with different points. For pinball games, this doesn't really matter, thus why I've never fixed it :-), as the scores are multi-millions and the chances of two scores being the same are tiny, but with e.g. Web Warp, the 2 digit scores do clash and in this case, Malban's Web Warp score was dropped in favour of his Scramble 2nd place.)




Scores are calculated using a score function that gives all players a ranking of 1 to 100, the function is actually:

Points = Round((((#Players - Position) ^ 1.5) * (100 - 1) / #Players ^ 1.5) + 0.00000001) + 1

The score function is designed to:
1) give players an incentive to try to get a high score (surprise!) and not play it safe
2) to remove the problem with draws, when players having similar rankings e.g. a player with a 1st and a 3rd will beat a player with two 2nds.

Personally, I like this ranking system better than percentages for many reasons:
1) It makes it exciting - rankings go all over the place when scores come, especially when live.
2) It stops some games being worthless to everyone else, once someone has got a really high score*.
3) It's not about getting highest scores outright, it's about beating the maximum number of players, it becomes very strategic.

* This is a tactic used in some other pinball tournaments, a top player will go really early onto a machine and put on a really high score, so others don't even bother to try to beat it.

Maybe this format is something to consider for next time. The formula is pretty simple in Excel, although my system uses a PHP web server, Javascript & Microsoft Access and ODBC.

If you're interested, here's the writeup in Pinball News of how we used the system to run the European Pinball Championships in 2009 in the UK: www.pinballnews.com/learn/epc2009/index.html and www.pinballnews.com/shows/ukpinballshow2009/index.html

[D-Type]

...and of course, many, many thanks to Helmut, managing tournaments takes a lot of time and it's greatly appreciated!

[hcmffm]

Thank you all for your thougths and thank-yous which are much appreciated. Organising the Vector War is fun and more and more routine but it's still some effort. I'm happy that the games chosen turned out to be a good choice.

- The time mismatch of the "last day" and the new score code was no good. Next year validity of score codes and "last day" rule will match.
- Currently, the last day is mainly silence and a bit of frighten of a possible score surprise. I'm glad that players were fair and didn't post scores in the very last minutes. Perhaps a better reglementation for the last day can be found.

D-Type: Thanks for checking and posting about the other tournament system. I'll have a look at the scoring.

In the background winners are about choosing their prizes from the prize list. Once all four winners have chosen the drawing of the two random prizes will follow.

[hcmffm]

The two winners have chosen their prizes - a good choice I think:
Chainsaw has chosen Prize A: Mystery prize 1: A full physical, rare edition of a game.

Malban has chosen Prize E: The Machinist's Vectrex visual upgrade kit 1 (donated by Tony Lindberg)

EDIT:
coleco1981 has chosen Prize B: Mystery prize 2: A full physical, rare edition of a game.

@jbrodach has chosen Prize F: Prototype of Vector Blade ¹(donated by Malban)

The two random prizes will be drawn in the coming days. Possible winners are all players that have qualified by playing 6 games except winners 1-4.

[coleco1981]

One comment about the last day high scores. Although i can understand that beating scores last minute may seem unfair, i think its actually exciting and makes the competition stategically interesting. It provides players extra pressure to try their best under strict time restrictions. That extra hour can make a difference with setting a high score. If there is concerns with people holding scores behind their back to disrupt players who think their scores are good enough to stay ontop then changing the score code the day of and perhaps again in the last few hours would stop that. With that said, with more score code changes the last day you could unrestrict the amount of scores that can be submitted and it would no longer be needed to limit everyone to 2 games on the last day.

Ive been a participate of a few inperson arcade tournaments scored by aurcade, everyone plays till the last minute of the tournament and players can submit as many high scores as they can archieve. The scoreboard is live so people can see what score they need to beat at any given moment. In my opinion the added element of time management at the last few hours is part of being a good tournament player.

[fruktodlaren]

Nov 21, 2018 15:42:07 GMT -5 hcmffm said:

... ...Mystery prize x: A full physical, rare edition of a game...

So can the rest of us mortals know what games they were? :-)

Edit: The mechinist prize kit is ready, packed and just awaiting a shipping address now.

[D-Type]

Nov 22, 2018 0:19:55 GMT -5 coleco1981 said:

...Ive been a participate of a few inperson arcade tournaments scored by aurcade, everyone plays till the last minute of the tournament and players can submit as many high scores as they can archieve. The scoreboard is live so people can see what score they need to beat at any given moment. In my opinion the added element of time management at the last few hours is part of being a good tournament player.

At the pinball tournaments I've been part of all the participants (100's, sometimes it's hard to get a view!) are watching the score screens at the end the see if they've qualified for later rounds/see their final position. The positions can jump around a lot, as said, it's very strategic. I like the idea of more score codes to stop score hoarding, maybe a new one every day and several on the last day, this would make it more of a one week event, instead of a one dayer - not everyone can make the last day. Maybe allow only a fixed number of scores per day? A problem is that the more rules you put in, the more time consuming it is to administer. The time zone difference is also an issue. The biggest one for me though is to not use % scoring ;-)

[Chainsaw]

Nov 22, 2018 1:23:00 GMT -5 fruktodlaren said:

Nov 21, 2018 15:42:07 GMT -5 hcmffm said:

... ...Mystery prize x: A full physical, rare edition of a game...

So can the rest of us mortals know what games they were?

Edit: The mechinist prize kit is ready, packed and just awaiting a shipping address now.

--> fruktodlaren: hcmffm will tell later what the mystery prizes are exactly. There is a special reason, that he cannot tell this now. Please have a little bit patience, hcmffm will tell as soon as possible what these prizes are. (And when he will do this, he will also explain the reason and you will understand why... Maybe hcmffm can describe this better than me, or maybe he can tell you more.)

[VectorX]

Nov 22, 2018 2:00:39 GMT -5 D-Type said:

Maybe allow only a fixed number of scores per day? A problem is that the more rules you put in, the more time consuming it is to administer.

I agree. I haven't analyzed the past Vector Wars to see if anyone "sniped" high scores at the last possible second often. I did last year, getting in a score literally a few minutes before the deadline, but I have chronic fatigue and can only play games either in between naps or at the end of the day once my naps are over with. Several games are "one shot" deals, where I can just play once, get a score and move on (Gravitrex last year is a prime example, as I ran through it once, getting the highest score possible with all bonuses possible [252,000]) and that's it. I can't always do that, as with Scramble I was able to get over 100,000 for the first time ever, but that's pretty difficult for me to do.

Just two more surgeries to go but I don't know when that'll be, but hopefully I won't have to do that again. And I almost did it again this year but somehow got in my head I had until 11 p. m. my time to get in a last score or two. The cutoff was actually 6 p. m. and I was *about* to put in my last score at 6:08 or something Oh well. I think it would've moved me up to fifth place too.

[fruktodlaren]

Nov 21, 2018 15:42:07 GMT -5 hcmffm said:

Malban has chosen Prize E: The Machinist's Vectrex visual upgrade kit

The Machinist's Vectrex visual upgrade kit prize have been entrusted to PostNord earlier tonight for the journey south to its new owner Malban. Enjoy and be sure to show some photos when you have used it.

[fmml]

Glad I had time to participate this year.
Vector Wars is a great opportunity to fire up the Vectrex.
I dont know about you but with the constant flow of new games it is hard to give every game the attention it deserves.
Good to have somebody else to choose for you which games to play.

Asteroid Cowwboy and Floor is Lava were great choices.
I especially liked to play Asteroid Cowboy. Fun game. In some levels there is quite some action going on with many vectors on screen. Still I didnt notice any severe flickering. I ran across some collision detection issues but it was always in favor of the player so it didnt get frustrating (lasso catching asteroids wich are outside the lasso).

Stramash Zone is a game I neglected for too long even I had a copy at home. First thing you notice how great this release was put together with great box and overlay. Yes it does flicker quite a lot but it is playable. Great to have this on the Vectrex. I never played Battlezone so this is probably as close I will get.

I knew Release is great game and I have played it before but for the tournament I read the manual for the first time. Didnt score veryy good but this on the list of my favourite games.

For the original games I did learn how to play Blitz for the first time. I learned to like it much more than expected. Would be intersting to learn how to score high. I made a mix of running and passing but I guess this is not the most efficient way.

Spike frustrated me a lot this year. Just couldnt score any decent scores. One score that was ok for me was lost before I could photoproof it. Maybe I should destroy my copy of Spud´s Revebge for better karma.

In Scramble I made it to level 3 for the first time which was nice. Thats one of the games I had as a kid

Pole Position i always fun to play. Gets exciting, the analogue controls work nice. Also the crash animation is pretty nice compared to what the other original games had.

Normally my ranking was always near the bottom. Very happy to make 5th place this year which is great for me.
Some bitter taste though because I am not sure it was really necessary that Helmut cancelled his Stramash Zone score. That one pulled my ranking down quite a bit while it was still valid.

Thanks again to Helmut, thank you to everyone who donated prizes. Congrats to the winners again. Great more people played this year.
Looking forward to learn more about the mystery prizes and already looking forward to next year.

[Malban]

Vectorblade "alpha" cartridge is on its way to America!

[fruktodlaren]

Just out of curiosity, is Moyu with his eight years of age, the youngest player to qualify in Vector War so far?
Both Len and Moyu say they look forward to participate in next years war. I will make sure to pull out the vectrex every now and then so we can practice. Scramble wasn't their cup of tea as they had difficulties to get over the threshold score in that one. Both level 3 and 4 are real killers even for me who has played Scramble quite a lot over the years. Moyu was good at Spike and Star Hawk and Len completely crushed (me) in Pole Position. So analog accuracy and timing was her thing it seems. I guess Hyperchase is the next logical step for her in her vectrex career.

I have found myself returning over and over to Astroid Cowboy long after the competition ended. I really like that game because it has great replay value as it requires a fine balance between strategic planning and on the fly improvisation to survive long in it. I have also taken a brief look at some of the other games that were available for download from the same page. There are some very promising games there with some fresh takes on old concepts realized in new ways. Well worth your time to take a look at them.

[hcmffm]

@all: Thank you for the recent summaries, thank yous, and suggestions. For the next Vector War I'll tackle the problems experienced during the past years in a way that games remain worth while playing even though a very high score has been posted and that the last day remains exciting - or perhaps will be even the most exciting and challenging day.

fruktodlaren: Your eight year old son Moyu is definetely the youngest player in a Vector War until now.
A note on the threshold scores: IIRC, threshold scores have been used from the very beginning of the Vector War - at that time the Vector War was intended for experienced players. I just looked it up: In Vector War II, the threshold score of Star Trek was 50.000 which was that high that even experienced players had problems. Nowadays, Vector War is intended for both beginners and experts but some of the threshold scores haven't been lowered since the early days and beginners might struggle reaching these scores. That might be the reason why your daugther Len had problems with the Scramble highscore. I'll have a second look at the threshold scores next year.

[Malban]

For your information:

I received my chosen price: (E) - THX!

(Now I have to find a controller I am willing to "sacrifice" :-) )

I also (physically) mailed all prices/parts I had something todo with (A)(B)(F)

Prize A: Mystery prize 1: A full physical, rare edition of a game.1, 2
Prize B: Mystery prize 2: A full physical, rare edition of a game.1, 2
Prize C: Boxed copy of Stramash Zone 1
Prize D: Collector Edition of Bloxorz 1
Prize E: The Machinist's Vectrex visual upgrade kit 1 (donated by Tony Lindberg)
Prize F: Prototype of Vector Blade 1(donated by Malban)

Regards

Malban