Vectrex Tournament: Vector War XIV (26th Oct -2nd Nov 2024)

[mozie]

Pole position 71600

[hcmffm]

Nov 2, 2024 14:25:39 GMT -5 Peer said:

... but on the more serious side rather ask how many of this year's participants do not own a flash-cartridge and can play only physical releases?

Marine Fox has no physical release so everyone who played Marine Fox must either a Multi ROM cartridge or a flashable cartridge. I might start a poll when VW is over.

[fruktodlaren]

Player: Fruktodlaren
Rip Off: 4510

[hcmffm]

Nov 2, 2024 16:34:14 GMT -5 fruktodlaren said:

Player: Fruktodlaren
Rip Off: 4510

...
11. Fruktodlaren (414pts)
12. Måns (408pts)
...

In the last minutes of the Vector War you ripped off Måns.

[D-Type]

D-Type's Score Photos
Rip Off 2900

[mozie]

Last entry pole position 71950 will continue playing for this for the night

[hcmffm]

Highscore list has been updated - see initial post.

Vector War XIV is over!

Below the final results of the Vector War. Please verify your scores for a last time and please holler in case a score is missing or something should be wrong.

Final ranking in Vector War XIV:
1. mozie (600pts)
2. Vorkosigan (562pts)
3. kiwasabi (561pts)
4. Malban (561pts)
5. Chainsaw (515pts)
6. Peer (510pts)
7. Sketcz (477pts)
8. eyelyft71 (452pts)
9. fmml (447pts)
10. arquillos (439pts)
11. Fruktodlaren (414pts)
12. Måns (408pts)
13. jbrodack (389pts)
14. nexus6 (337pts)
15. D-Type (301pts)
16. jgkspsx (282pts)
17. scotthuggins (255pts)
18. rossross (253pts)
19. Len (246pts)
20. FredriK (240pts)
21. Moyu (222pts)
22. hcmffm (221pts)
23. darrin9999 (134pts)
24. Zuko (78pts)
25. Louis XIV (69pts)
26. Toph (60pts)
27. Anna (21pts)
28. Pika Pika (18pts)

Congratulations to John (mozie ) 🥇 for winning Vector War XIV! Second winner is Marc (Vorkosigan) 🥈 and third winner is kiwasabi 🥉. Congratulations!

Rip Off score of more than 20.000 points, EDIH completed, more than 200k in Bedlam and many other high lights scores - this year we had again a good mixture of both novice players (or even first time Vectrex players), medium players, and expert players which is great. Thank you all for your participating, your dedication, and your excellent playing! 💯

Winner of the famous Wooden spoon 🥄 is Toph (assuming that Anna is immune to the wooden spoon. Do you confirm, Tony (fruktodlaren)?).

[VectorX]

Now with the dust settling and things are getting back to normal with people, with those new to Thrust and all I'd check out the Hard+ setting. There's several new things with that, although there IS two pieces of bad news with this though, being:

1. You only get an extra ship once every 20,000, rather than 10,000 points like on the easy setting.
2. Bunkers fire a homing missile or something at you as well along with their regular firepower; these don't disappear unless they make contact with a wall, are absorbed by your shields or they hit and destroy YOU.

BUT...on the flip side, there's several good parts to this though:

1. Two new levels. One is here in the spoiler if you don't want to know what it's like until you get to it, but then it might come out looking differently than you imagined anyway

SPOILER: Click to show

{Spoiler}It's VERY claustrophobic; there's barely any room IN the room with the pod where you should shoot the reactor several times, then turn around and shoot all the bunkers. There's so many vectors drawn (which I assume is the deal) that there's slowdown when you finally leave the room with the pod.

Level 8 is maze-like; neither level is like Thrust at all, in my opinion, but they're still cool to see.
2. There's an extra control mechanism where you can aim in one direction while also being able to thrust.
3. One level has a secret fuel cell dump if you can find it.
4. The bonus game of ZSB *might* be unlocked. I think you press button 3 to start but just wait several seconds and watch the scroll at the bottom of the screen to say it's there; I'm not sure if settings are saved if you get far enough on a flashcart to do this (I think it's unlocked if you get past the reverse gravity planets)? I know it works with me since I have it on cart.
5. You can get a potentially higher score than on easy, due to getting a "perfect" with a planet. This involves
a. Destroying all bunkers
b. Beaming up or destroying all fuel cells
c. Making it off the planet with the pod
d. Destroying the reactor
e. NOT dying

This gives you a pretty hefty bonus and it can be done on several of the planets if you're good enough (kind of like how you can destroy the reactor on easy, but on the harder ones with the reverse gravity you'll just want to beam up all fuel cells/destroy bunkers for points and then destroy the planet since some of them are too hard to try to get the blasted pod off of).

[mozie]

Great tournament again this year, it really is one of the highlights of my year to have a week to play some amazing vectrex games. Highlights for me this year were hating thrust and then loving thrust and them having it all over again! Really great game and the tip about shooting the factory really helped me @vectorx and I look forward to playing it more in the coming weeks, I was also impressed with marine fox, a fun yet frustrating experience at times and of course the amazing EDIH which is always a joy to play for me. Some great scores again from Chainsaw and excellent first vector wars scores from kiwasabi and of course @malban and all the other good friends I've met playing in this tournament. Iam already looking forward to next year and facing off in a 45 min a side soccer match with @peer. Thanks to all for running and organising the tournament hcmffm and see you all (and hopefully more players) next year again

[VectorX]

Nov 2, 2024 17:19:19 GMT -5 mozie said:

Highlights for me this year were hating thrust and then loving thrust and them having it all over again! Really great game and the tip about shooting the factory really helped me @vectorx and I look forward to playing it more in the coming weeks,

It can be a pretty nerve-wracking and frustrating game; I can't play it with my feet on the floor, as a lot of the time I'll have my right foot with my toes pressed against the floor and my heel up! (I'm assuming it's the equivalent of clutching onto someone while going through a haunted house or hanging onto their arm on a scary rollercoaster.)

BTW, can't believe I forgot my own video with ZSB and the new levels! I can't remember if both or just one of the levels came out blurry though; it was done with a webcam I got for free where ZSB came out looking ok for the time but for some reason the new Thrust levels weren't as clear. I'll eventually get a brand new camera and shoot a way better quality video, as long as some setting will hide the Vectrex flicker that can't be seen with the naked eye (or it's some feature just automatically built in).

AGAIN, spoiler alerts in case you want to see the new levels for yourself!

[Vorkosigan]

I'd like to thank you all so much for a week full of fun, a fierce competition, much adrenaline and the constant pressure to improve one's personal best scores again and again.

I'm very happy having achieved the second place in the end. Last night was totally spent for Clean Sweep.

hcmffm: Great event as every year, Helmut. Again, there can't be enough praising for spending so much of your free time, that all of us can enjoy playing our beloved Vectrex competing wit each other.

My personal highlights were (again) Polar Rescue and Pole Position, EDIH and Galaxy Unicorn and of course Release with its mix of action and pulsating sound.

See you all here next year again. Or in VFU in the meantime. 😄

Chainsaw: Get well soon!

mozie: Congrats for winning this Vector War. Very well deserved. 👍😃

[fruktodlaren]

Nov 2, 2024 17:00:12 GMT -5 hcmffm said:

Winner of the famous Wooden spoon 🥄 is Toph (assuming that Anna is immune to the wooden spoon. Do you confirm, Tony (fruktodlaren)?).

I confirm that Anna is immune to winning the spoon, so Toph is indeed the winner of the spoon.

[fruktodlaren]

I had fun in this Vector War. As I am currently on sick leave from work after my cancer surgery (that was successfull by the way), I had a lot more time to play this year than I have had in the past. I know... The good with the bad, right?

As usual Len and Moyu joined me in playing. They are both Vector War Veterans by now. Moyu started when he was 8 years old. Len's boyfriend Måns joined too and he really dove into the competition. We had the same point-score when there was one hour left of the competition. Most of that last hour was spent on trying to overtake Måns's score in ACoL (in vain I might add) and in the end I managed to up my Rip Off score by a fraction to rise one level in the scoring table for that game, resulting in me overtaking Måns by just a few measly points (yeah, sorry about that Måns), and he wasn't even present to defend my intrusion on his place in the score table. It IS Vector War after all, and one have to attack to win, so I did.

The highlights for me were Unicorn Galaxy, Thrust and Clean Sweep.

• Thrust is nothing short of a technical marvel in Vectrex programming and the best port of Thrust I have played. I can't be alone to just start Thrust to just listen to the incredible music sometimes. Thanks to @vectorx for showing the secret stuff in Thrust that I hadn't seen before.
• Unicorn Galaxy is a special game in many ways. Not only is it challenging and fun to play, it also have a cool origin story that ties in to the FB group Vectrex Fans Unite. The game designer is a young girl of 10 and Chris of Binarystar Software made the game according to the design she came up with in a drawing. This is a game I surely will continue playing.
• My third and last highlight is surprisingly Clean Sweep. I got some new found love for this game during the competition. It is an interesting and original take on a by now classic concept of Pacman cloning (Puckman, Rockman, CDman and whatever else he has been called in various clones). The fact that you need to empty your vacuum cleaner bag every once in a while makes the gameplay more dynamic and ultimately challenging in the later levels when the bag can't hold as much as in the earlier levels.

For next year, I nominate the game Sea Pup, as I think it has gameplay suitable for competitive play.

The Spoon in its sealed plastic bag is hanging on the wall in my storage room, awaiting me to pack and send it to the winner. The Vectrexagon shell (sadly still empty) is also ready to be sent to whoever will pick it from the prize table.
Well... I *MAY* be able to put the game on an EPROM PCB for the new owner, if the winner doesn't have a Vectrexagon PCB to put in the shell already.

Huge thanks to hcmffm Helmut for organizing the whole thing and keeping track of our sometimes hard to read screenshots of our scores.

I will now proceed to go through the scores of all the "Lindberg household" players and make sure everything is as it should with our scores.

Happy belated Play your Vectrex Day from us in Sweden.

[D-Type]

As ever, a great event! Thanks to everyone for taking part, it's the only gaming I do throughout the year, apart from a bit of pinball with my boys, so I really look forward to it. Special thanks go to Helmut for all the organisation and score keeping, which I know takes much longer than can be imagined. Thanks too, to the game authors and prize-givers, home brew keeps the Vectrex alive.

There always seems to be a game that stands out for me and this year it's VECTREXAGON. It's a beautiful combo of sound, vector movement and gameplay dynamics that showcases what the Vectrex is all about and why it's unique. My boys got hooked on it too.

I'm looking forward to VW XV, see you there!

[fruktodlaren]

Nov 2, 2024 18:44:38 GMT -5 fruktodlaren said:

I will now proceed to go through the scores of all the "Lindberg household" players and make sure everything is as it should with our scores.

Here is what I found.

• Player: Fruktodlaren (Tony, that's me) - All scores OK.
• Player: Moyu - All scores OK.
• Player: Len - Polar Rescue score is wrong. She must have gotten someone elses score.
• Player: Måns - Vectrexagon score is wrong. His last Vectrexagon score is missing.
• Player: Anna - All scores OK.

Here are the correct scores for Len's Polar Rescue and Måns's Vectrexagon.

Player LEN:
Polar Rescue: 40275

Player: Måns
Vectrexagon: 256:38