Vectrex High Score Club

[hcmffm]

At AtariAge, a discussion has started regarding a Vectrex High Score Club. At AtariAge, High Score Clubs for various platforms (Atari 2600, Lynx, Jaguar, ...) are available, already. In such a High Score Club, a random game is played for one month and then scores are compared.

Notes:

• This Vectrex High Score Club hasn't started, yet, but I think it's a good idea and I wanted to let you know.
• Sure enough, such a Vectrex High Score Club could be run here in the Vector Gaming Forum, too, but idea and discussion has started at AtariAge and AtariAge hosts this format, already.

[hcmffm]

AtariAge user TheCurlyBard will organize the Vectrex High Score Club. ATM, TheCurlyBard is writing up a first post with guidelines and some rules for the Vectrex HSC. Minestorm might be first game that is played.

I'll keep you up-to-date...

[hcmffm]

Vectrex Highscore club will start on 1st of February. First game that will be played for one month is Minestorm.

All topics for discussion, rules, and submitting scores all reside in the "> Classic Consoles > Vectrex > Vectrex High Score Club" subforum at AtariAge.

[Peer]

Jan 22, 2024 16:26:54 GMT -5 hcmffm said:

Vectrex Highscore club will start on 1st of February. First game that will be played for one month is Minestorm.

Greetings everyone,

let me briefly(?) chime in regarding Mine Storm. There is a lot of flawed information about this game to be found all over the internet, some of it simply being incorrect. Even the Wikipedia pages (especially the German one) are wrong in some of the details listed. I hope this here helps to clarify some things:

There are only 2 (in words: two) different version of Mine Storm. I am talking about the officially released GCE and MB versions, and I am not figuring in any homebrew hacks or patches (Fred Taft, Mine Storm III). Those two official versions were both programmed by John Hall, and they are called revision b (rev_b) and revision c (rev_c).

GCE consoles have BIOS checksum 0xb796 and come with rev_b, MB consoles have either BIOS checksum 0x7931 or 0x7adb, but both of them come with the very same Mine Storm rev_c. See also here.

The official Mine Storm II cartridge also has Mine Storm version rev_c on it. The only difference being that the code is mapped to cartridge space (0x0000) instead of ROM space (0xe0000), and that the title was changed to "MINE STORM II". Other than that, everything is identical.

Mine Storm rev_b is the one containing what is commonly called the "wave-13 bug", and this rev_b can potentially go on up to Mine Field 89. There never has been a version which correctly ends after Mine Field 13. Rev_b was meant to do so and meant to end after level 13 with a proper game-over message. It contains code which checks for an end-marker in the level-data, and the level-data does indeed contain such an end-marker. But the code which does the check has a bug, and does not correctly set a respective flag. Thus, the game-play goes on, and, depending on another bug in the code, either the game (incorrectly) resets to the initial menu, or goes on using garbage-data as level-data. All the levels after Mine Field 13 up to Mine Field 89 are garbage-data levels. Most important here: Also the scoring-tables, telling how much points are awarded for shooting the various mines, are now read from garbage-data, giving you a ridiculous number of points in some levels. Any Mine Storm rev_b score achieved after Mine Field 13 is essentially quantum-mechanics and should be considered invalid. In short: Using rev_b in a tournament or for high-score competitions does not really make any sense.

Mine Storm rev_c == Mine Storm II is essentially different. The wave-13 bug is not fixed there, it has been thrown out. The level-data is replaced by a level-generating code. The number of levels is potentially unlimited, but after level 256 there is no change anymore and the mine-types stay the same. All levels (and their sequence) in rev_c are different from those in rev_b (except for the very first level). The score-table problem of rev_b mentioned above does not occur here. But scores of rev_c and rev_b cannot be compared to each other.

Both versions, rev_b and rev_c (and thus also the Mine Storm II cartridge) still contain several other bugs, one of them being indeed another scoring bug. That one is a minor bug, but technically could be exploited to obtain some higher scores. Though likely only a madperson would try to do so 😉

I will not go into more details here, as right now (and as usual) time is limited and I have several other Vectrex related things going on in parallel. If there is interest I will write it all up at some point in the future. Just let me know.

As a summary, for the High-Score club, only using rev_c == Mine Storm II makes sense.

Many Cheers,
Peer

[hcmffm]

Thank you for this great insight into the revisisions of Minestorm, Peer. A long time ago I have read that the levels between the various Minestorm revisions are a bit different between the various revisions - or is this a rumor, too?

Jan 23, 2024 2:48:11 GMT -5 Peer said:

.. As a summary, for the High-Score club, only using rev_c == Mine Storm II makes sense.

Alternatively, playing could be limited to level 13 or a fixed score. But I think that this is not really a good alternative - especially for expert players.

[Peer]

Jan 23, 2024 13:59:46 GMT -5 hcmffm said:

Thank you for this great insight into the revisisions of Minestorm, Peer. A long time ago I have read that the levels between the various Minestorm revisions are a bit different between the various revisions - or is this a rumor, too?

Quoting myself from my post above

"All levels (and their sequence) in rev_c are different from those in rev_b (except for the very first level)."

Meaning: Levels 2 to 13 in rev_b are different from levels 2 to 13 in rev_c. Scores from rev_b and rev_c cannot be compared. Hope this helps.

Many Cheers,
Peer

[hcmffm]

Jan 23, 2024 14:42:00 GMT -5 Peer said:

... "All levels (and their sequence) in rev_c are different from those in rev_b (except for the very first level)."

Meaning: Levels 2 to 13 in rev_b are different from levels 2 to 13 in rev_c. Scores from rev_b and rev_c cannot be compared.

Thank you, this extra info for those who didn't make it through your above text wall (including me) did help.

[thecurlybard]

Great info on the variants, I was confused if my MB vectrex had the same fixes as the MS2 cart, seems it has.

I'll leave it open for people to use what they have, but as I'm not expecting great swarms of entrants, if we all have the ability to play any rom then we can tighten the rules later.

I'll put a poll up soon for March's game

[VectorX]

Jan 23, 2024 16:13:58 GMT -5 thecurlybard said:

I'll leave it open for people to use what they have, but as I'm not expecting great swarms of entrants, if we all have the ability to play any rom then we can tighten the rules later.

Yeah, you're new at this, so people will be thinking things up Hell, there was stuff going on with the Vector War last year that merited quite a bit of discussion, and that's been going on for eight years now!

[thecurlybard]

I'm hoping to be involved this year. Don't expect me to be anywhere near the top though, my scores are going to be low.

I don't normally care for flashcards, nor emulators, as I find I can't concentrate enough on any game long enough to learn it well enough to enjoy it, which is when I went looking for hsc. Give me a game to focus on

[hcmffm]

Great to see the organisator of the Vectrex High Score Club posting here, thecurlybard ! (Sure enough, most info will be posted at AtariAge, only.)
___

Vectrex High Score Club has started!

Until this morning I had thought that Vectrex High Score Club would start 1st of February. But I was wrong: Vectrex High Score Club has started, already, and Brett (playvectrex) was first to submit.

In the Vectrex forum at AtariAge you'll find three topics for the Vectrex HSC:

• Topic "Vectrex Hi score club" with general discussion
  
• Topic "Vectrex High Score Club Rules " with rules.
• Topic "High Score Club - Feb 2023 Minestorm" for score submissions.

As thecurlybard has pointed out already, idea behind the Vectrex High Score Club is having fun playing Vectrex games and compare with other players. Emulators can also be used, so that people who don't own a Vectrex can also play along.

So fire up your Vectrex console or PC with Vectrex emulator or webbrowser and join in!

[hcmffm]

Vectrex High Score Club is on and first game is Minestorm. Until now, there are 5 participants and Minestorm scores range from 70.000 to 900.000. The Vectrex HSC is a fun contest - if you have fun playing the Vectrex join in regardless whether you are a novice or expert player.

[hcmffm]

ATM, 7 players have submitted scores for the first round of the Vectrex HSC with Mine Storm. Still about two weeks to join in from the very beginning of the Vectrex High Score Club.

BTW: Vectrex HSC has a logo:

[hcmffm]

First round of the Vectrex High Score Club with Mine Storm lasts five more days. Game played in round 2 (March) will be Galaxy Wars SL.

[jbrodack]

I haven't been checking up on vectrex stuff as much lately but this does sound fun. A month seems a bit long to me but does give everyone time to get the best possible score. I might try next month's game.