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Post by VectorX on Nov 2, 2021 18:37:50 GMT -5
^I think I've made 60,000 on Galaxy Wars before on the standard three lives before but I can't recall for sure.
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Post by playvectrex on Nov 2, 2021 18:47:58 GMT -5
My best score was 77050 with 249.4 but there I made at least 2 mistakes (touching the roadside, hitting an oil slick, or braking down a bit). Interesting that you got different scores with the same time. Is it maybe the quantity of passed cars as somebody wrote, or maybe a player loses score when he is touching the roadside or braking down a bit? Or does even (crazy idea) the time of the qualification round counts? But 78000 is awesome! So I have a breakdown analysis of the game that I'll share... since I feel like the game truly comes down to the random number of cars you pass. I recorded myself play a 77,250 game and here's the breakdown of points 64000+(77*50)+(100*50)+(22*200) = 77250 64000 + 177 cars passed * 50 points 22 seconds left * 200 points = 77,250 So assuming the same points going into the bonus (which seems time based 248.8) 64000+(92*50)+(100*50)+(22*200) = 78000 Pass 192 cars (random) 64000+(88*50)+(100*50)+(23*200) = 78000 Pass 188 cars And drive 1 second faster somehow Further analysis of my video manually counting cars and looking at the times/points on the frame just before the counter resets: tot - ea - pts - sec - sec Qualify 33 - 33 - 16000 - 50 left - 65.7 (starts at 120, so 70s lap) Race 69 - 36 - 28000 - 22 left - 68.7 (count resets to 90. 90 - 22 = 68s. slower lap due to acceleration) 109 - 40 - 40000 - 22 left - 128.7 (count resets to 82. 82 - 22 = 60s. 60s laps from here on out) 159 - 50 - 52000 - 22 left - 188.7 210 - 51 - 64000 - 22 left - 248.7 but it takes .1 time before the bonus comes up 36+40+50+51 = 177 cars passed which matches the bonus round 64000+(77*50)+(100*50)+(22*200) = 77250 Good Luck! You'll need it 
By the way: I see here awesome great scores in Galaxy Wars, f.e. over 60'000 at first place. Is it correct, that everybody should play with only 3 lives, and not more? And is it correct, that everybody should play the mixed mode (Galaxy Wars / Space launcer mixed levels) or is it allowed, to choose only Galaxy Wars? Yes that is what I understand as well, 3 lives and the default GWSL combo game. I got 41k in what felt like a fairly relaxed game... and at one point in that game I got a 4k bonus. I bet you'll post a 100k point score soon, Chainsaw |
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Post by Chainsaw on Nov 2, 2021 19:42:37 GMT -5
That's an absolute awesome analysis of the Pole Position "score system"... You actually deserved a vector war special award for it :-) And it seems it needs really a lot of luck to reach 78000...
Oh no, I think this will be difficult with the 100k in Galaxy Wars for me - I had already luck to reach over 30K, and I didn't spend a lot of time with the game. (Tour de France consumed a lot of time and nerves today. Somehow I hate this game, somehow I love it... But I love Hyper Chase, and Tour de France is something like Hyper Chase with bicycles...)
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Post by 8-Bit Waves on Nov 2, 2021 22:34:34 GMT -5
I also have a soft spot for TdF and Hyperchase.
That Pole Position score is insane. Broken records in Vector War!
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Post by Vorkosigan on Nov 3, 2021 0:12:15 GMT -5
That's an absolute awesome analysis of the Pole Position "score system"... You actually deserved a vector war special award for it :-) And it seems it needs really a lot of luck to reach 78000... Oh no, I think this will be difficult with the 100k in Galaxy Wars for me - I had already luck to reach over 30K, and I didn't spend a lot of time with the game. (Tour de France consumed a lot of time and nerves today. Somehow I hate this game, somehow I love it... But I love Hyper Chase, and Tour de France is something like Hyper Chase with bicycles...) Some thoughts to my highscores in Pole Position an GWSL yesterday. Pole Position: It was my one and only attempt with no crashes and as in every driving game, I tried to drive the shortest way (inner side of the curves). To do that you have to criss cross the other cars and there were many close situations where I got really lucky not to have crashed. So maybe I passed more cars this way. I did some web research, but unfortunately I haven't found informations about the maximum score that's possible. At least the qualification round has to be perfect aka 16000 points. GWSL: That's what let me write about my "good day". It was default setting with 3 lives and GWSL mode. In one of the later SL levels I got also 4000 points as mentioned above, I got over Level 17, if I recall that right and there where so many moments, that were so close, that I couldn't believe I hadn't lost a life. I don't know, if there is an end of the game, but I don't think, that I will repeat that score again soon. :-) Cheers Marc |
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Post by playvectrex on Nov 3, 2021 0:37:15 GMT -5
That's an absolute awesome analysis of the Pole Position "score system"... You actually deserved a vector war special award for it :-) And it seems it needs really a lot of luck to reach 78000... Thanks  I kind of don't like to mindlessly play over and over for a good score, but rather try to come up with strategies or practice certain techniques to get better. About 2 to 3 years ago when my son and I were really battling for a top Pole Position score, I did some basic video analysis back then to determine how the score was calculated. Back then I determined it was based on the cars you pass, and you don't need to zigzag through them. Just any car you pass counts. Today though, I really looked at the entire race multiple times to make sure it was exactly 177 cars, and it was for my 77,250 point game. So it's not some random number generator at the end, but something calculated either at the beginning of the game, or in real-time during the game, and it places those cars on the track. So if you are crashing due to too many cars that are hard to navigate through, that was likely going to be a high score game |
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Post by playvectrex on Nov 3, 2021 17:59:13 GMT -5
Sven of vectrex.be has contacted Darryl and me via mail. At first, both VectorX and I thought that this might be some spam but soon after I knew that it was not. Sven is a very dedicated Vectrex fan and even though he just registered and started his website vectrex.be it contains already a full browser-based Vectrex emulator with quite a number of Vectrex games. Worth while visiting the website - just make sure that for Vector War you must play on real hardware.  Besides his Vectrex hobby Sven is in the beer business. He decided to combine both things and donate two boxes of beer (16 bottles in total) for the Vector War. How you can win it: The two boxes of beer go to that player in Vector War XI... ...who has the highest score in the game "Get the beer" and... ...who is located in Europe and.. ...who likes beer or has parents who like beer. Here's a photo of what you might get:  I guess a prize winner will be found and then drunkenness of this person might be even higher.  Thank you very much Sven for donating this unusal prize! That's a very awexome prize, Sven! Since folks in the US are not eligible, I'm going to pick myself up some beer for my win. Nathan was first in the US to complete the game, me second... but it was such a challenge that I need that beer reward now. If multiple people in the EU complete the game, you could go by the fastest time to break the tie. |
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Post by hcmffm on Nov 3, 2021 18:04:10 GMT -5
By the way: I see here awesome great scores in Galaxy Wars, f.e. over 60'000 at first place. Is it correct, that everybody should play with only 3 lives, and not more? ... All players are supposed to play Galaxy Wars/Space Launcher with the default settings. I.e. game is "Galaxy Wars/Space Launcher" and 3 lives. |
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Post by hcmffm on Nov 3, 2021 18:11:04 GMT -5
By the way: I see here awesome great scores in Galaxy Wars, f.e. over 60'000 at first place. Is it correct, that everybody should play with only 3 lives, and not more? ... As Brett pointed out above, all players are supposed to play Galaxy Wars/Space Launcher with the default settings. I.e. game is "Galaxy Wars/Space Launcher" and 3 lives. ... Since folks in the US are not eligible, I'm going to pick myself up some beer for my win. Nathan was first in the US to complete the game, me second... but it was such a challenge that I need that beer reward now. If multiple people in the EU complete the game, you could go by the fastest time to break the tie. IIRC, you're located in the UK. Not quite sure whether Sven counts this as "Europe" because custom charges might be high. |
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Post by VectorX on Nov 3, 2021 18:37:50 GMT -5
^Brett? He's located here in the States, unless you accidentally quoted the wrong person.
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Post by playvectrex on Nov 3, 2021 23:27:20 GMT -5
Yeah, I'm in the Chicago area |
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Post by playvectrex on Nov 5, 2021 15:25:02 GMT -5
Hey all! I wanted to see how high Pole Position would go, so I dug into the code and found the random number generators for the cars. It essentially picks a random 0~3 to know if it should not place a car, or if it should place one left, center or right. 0 - no car 1 - car left 2 - car center 3 - car right So I've hard coded the random number to 1, 2 or 3. Notably hard coding 0 crashes the game during the qualifying lap. So here's your max possible score of 78,600! This was achieve with all cars generated on the left, for a maximum of 204 cars. 64000 + (204 x 50) + (22 x 200) = 78,600 Other things to note: 248.8 / 240 / 22 seconds left are min / max / max numbers respectively. The score is always 64,000 at the end, before the bonus... and driving over a few oil slicks doesn't matter for that base score. It could change the random number sequence though... so you might WANT to hit some oil slicks. Of course, I played the All Cars Left game for this, so that I didn't have to drive on any oil slicks ;-)  You can play these games here to see how they feel: Pole Position (All Cars Left)Pole Position (All Cars Center)Pole Position (All Cars Right)
So 78,000 is achievable, and more... assuming the random number generator is in your favor! |
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Post by Chainsaw on Nov 6, 2021 8:42:00 GMT -5
Oh, that's a very great analysis, also the idea to change the code to test it. Yeah, I was often wondering, why I still got over 77000 points, even if I hit 2 or 3 oil slicks. And it's interesting, how the game is generating random numbers for no car, car left / center / right... So if you have bad luck in a game with the random numbers, you can have less cars to pass = less score... Thank you for this interesting information and the files.
You bring me back to my idea: Because I very like the Hyper Chase track and landscape of Game 2, I want to change the game that I have endless lives in Game 2. I'm not 100% sure if there is also a finish line, or track 2 is some kind of endless, because it's hard to reach the end, if there is one in Game 2. (I'm using always the 2 player game on Game 2 of Hyperchase, to have double quantity of lifes). But I would like to try to change the game code, that I have endless lifes in game 2. But I only know a very little bit about assembler, also nothing about the Vectrex CPU, but I have to search a bit how all this stuff works... If somebody directly have a good suggestion? (But I can search / google myself, but sometimes, somebody directly can say: Use this tools / See this website.)
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Post by playvectrex on Nov 6, 2021 12:09:17 GMT -5
Oh, that's a very great analysis, also the idea to change the code to test it. Yeah, I was often wondering, why I still got over 77000 points, even if I hit 2 or 3 oil slicks. And it's interesting, how the game is generating random numbers for no car, car left / center / right... So if you have bad luck in a game with the random numbers, you can have less cars to pass = less score... Thank you for this interesting information and the files. You bring me back to my idea: Because I very like the Hyper Chase track and landscape of Game 2, I want to change the game that I have endless lives in Game 2. I'm not 100% sure if there is also a finish line, or track 2 is some kind of endless, because it's hard to reach the end, if there is one in Game 2. (I'm using always the 2 player game on Game 2 of Hyperchase, to have double quantity of lifes). But I would like to try to change the game code, that I have endless lifes in game 2. But I only know a very little bit about assembler, also nothing about the Vectrex CPU, but I have to search a bit how all this stuff works... If somebody directly have a good suggestion? (But I can search / google myself, but sometimes, somebody directly can say: Use this tools / See this website.) I'd be happy to make a game 2 infinite lives version of Hyperchase for you, Stefan. I've done something similar to VeCaves to see if there is an end. Alas, there is no end in VeCaves. After Vector War ends... I'll share some more thoughts on Pole Position. After playing so many times, I had a thought about how it works and pretty much think I know the secret to get high scores. Despite thinking I know though, I still don't have 78,000 or higher Definitely not the kind of secret that is a cheat either. If I forget to post it, please email me |
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Post by Chainsaw on Nov 6, 2021 13:22:39 GMT -5
Ouh really? I mean this would be extremely nice of you, but really only, if it's not too much effort for you. And i don't know what i could offer as a thank you... But I would gladly accept the offer. Somehow I would also be interested in trying something like this myself, but I simply don't have the time in my everyday life to get involved, and with my very very weak assembly skills, it is certainly not easy to analyze the game code. Im more the user / player, sometimes betatester, sometimes a tinkerer, but my last program code that I wrote, was in Commodore 64 Basic... Edit: Somehow I struggling with the "Quote" function, LOL... |
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I kind of don't like to mindlessly play over and over for a good score, but rather try to come up with strategies or practice certain techniques to get better. About 2 to 3 years ago when my son and I were really battling for a top Pole Position score, I did some basic video analysis back then to determine how the score was calculated. Back then I determined it was based on the cars you pass, and you don't need to zigzag through them. Just any car you pass counts. Today though, I really looked at the entire race multiple times to make sure it was exactly 177 cars, and it was for my 77,250 point game. So it's not some random number generator at the end, but something calculated either at the beginning of the game, or in real-time during the game, and it places those cars on the track. So if you are crashing due to too many cars that are hard to navigate through, that was likely going to be a high score game 
Thank you very much Sven for donating this unusal prize!