EAB/Lemon Super League 2010: Round 2 - Lotus Turbo Challenge 2

[capehorn]

Originally Posted by xpect

Last night final run:




72,057,970

Do you think that score is beatable Xpect? I mean was every track as close to perfect as you could expect? Did you make any significant mistakes? Were your times excellent on every track and did you get just about every time token/turbo/yeehah possible?

The reason I am asking is because I want to know if I should even TRY to beat that. I knew 60m was beatable, 65m was possible and thought 70m was probably the highest score even technically possible. But 72m? I'm not even sure I could do that with savestates putting together my best runs on each track.

[AmigaFriend]

Originally Posted by capehorn

Do you think that score is beatable Xpect? I mean was every track as close to perfect as you could expect? Did you make any significant mistakes? Were your times excellent on every track and did you get just about every time token/turbo/yeehah possible?

The reason I am asking is because I want to know if I should even TRY to beat that. I knew 60m was beatable, 65m was possible and thought 70m was probably the highest score even technically possible. But 72m? I'm not even sure I could do that with savestates putting together my best runs on each track.

Lotus 2 is a game that I played very much in the past and from time to time I tend play it again. So i managed to finish it almost every time i played.

But I've been practising many aspects of Lotus 2 this past two weeks:

Beside of course the track layouts, memorise all the hazards by hart the best way to avoid them, and the best way to use them to your favour. For example sliding in the oil can give you a edge in making you curve faster and/or not having to decelerate in a curve (of course if they are inside a bend).

Something that is very important is how you can avoid the nasty track opponents, specially as they tend to keep going always in the same direction as you do. Studying the patterns is the way to go. I managed to 'fool' them making very near passages to their body, or when you see that their are on your line, decelerate a bit and then go to the other side again very near to them. The problem with this technique is that you have to perfect it in every situation/speed/track condition, but for me is the best way i found to almost never touching other opponents.

I say again, for me, manual gears is the way to go. CPU is very slow reacting to speed changes, and manual gears can make you go faster recovering from bumps, etc. and in much situations going down to 4th gear and high revving can give you extra control in some areas: ice/sand tracks.

Never break! Deceleration is you friend. Let the car go and slide smoothly in tight curves or/when downhill.

70 millions is achiavable to anyone with enough training and using techniques that suits them best. Those small examples I give work for me with the pad i use and the way i tend to play.

But really Lotus 2 scoring system beats me altogether. I've made a far better run earlier and didn't manage to reach even 65 million. At the beginning of this competition for example i managed to end the game with only 40 million after my first score post. But then i've finished many times in the 50-something scoring. So i have not much to say.

This was the video that made me try to reach 70 million, because i've never thought is was possible in this game. And the score here is higher than mine.

[ Show youtube player ]

Good luck!

[john4p]

Originally Posted by xpect

I say again, for me, manual gears is the way to go. CPU is very slow reacting to speed changes, and manual gears can make you go faster recovering from bumps, etc. and in much situations going down to 4th gear and high revving can give you extra control in some areas: ice/sand tracks.

I (usually) never lose enough speed by collisions to get down to the "speed-area" of 4th gear so there's no difference for me between auto and manual gears.

Originally Posted by xpect

Never break! Deceleration is you friend. Let the car go and slide smoothly in tight curves or/when downhill.

Yes, the Lotus-games are all about releasing gas (which sometimes almost doesn't reduce speed but always greatly changes handling).


You must be very good at the final track. While my best score at the marshes was having 25 seconds left my best score at the final thunderstorm track was having 1 second left at the end...

[john4p]

Originally Posted by xpect

This was the video that made me try to reach 70 million, because i've never thought is was possible in this game. And the score here is higher than mine.

[ Show youtube player ]

This has to be a bad joke.

If you think that run is good you're using the normal version and your score is in fact about 36 millions.

[mailman]

I think that movie was shot using the version with different scoring system. He completed the first track with score I am sometimes not able to make after the second stage.

Bear also in mind that he didn't drive flawlessly during the first track.

By the way, what is your score after the first track? Mine is something about 5 mln.

[john4p]

Originally Posted by mailman

Mine is something about 5 mln.

Mine, too (and you have to drive perfect to beat 5M on track 1). Yes, that player used the normal version which has double the score that we have.

With that effort this player would currently rank in 10th position in our competition.

If xpect was inspired and impressed by this playthrough he's using the normal version.
So his real score would be ~36M. He played this game a lot in the past. Hmm...

Also what's with the "reacting CPU opponents"? The opponents in Lotus games don't react, they just move from left to right and back (at varying speeds).

[mosfet]

The video's definitely the normal version. 9.5m after stage 1, after he crashes all over the place. 5m is typical on the WHLoad version with no crashes, top speed throughout, and making all the water jumps.

[john4p]

Well, maybe xpect didn't know about the different versions, didn't actually watch the complete (and not impressive at all) vid and just was impressed by the score at the end...

[AmigaFriend]

Well i've never would thought this score would provoque such a massive response, just because i was frank and decided to say what moved me to improve the scores.

I use whdload version, and was not aware of different scoring versions. That score i achieved was a one it wonder, don't ask me how it happened, it just did. As I said earlier the next best i did was 64 million points in what i think was a better run than that.

john4p you're absolutely right i didn't watched the all video, only watched segments in the first weekend of this round, then went through the end and i viewed the score and was what it was, altough quite honestly today i viewed the last level and it seemed a bit odd to me reaching the same conclusions of the type of gameplay, that you put in your posts.

Well i've been competing with you guys for some time. I'm a bit on and off on the rounds, based on wether i have more work or not. This month i had plenty of time to dedicate to personal projects, so i decided to take more seriously this round and make some indepth of the game.

And yes john4p i played very much this game and still play it from time to time, has i play Stunt Car Racer, Newzealand Story, Bubble Bobble and others. Amiga games, i always go back and like to play.

I'm sorry for confusions and specially for what seems to have linked to a video, with a lousy player and specially with a different scoring system, that i based my motives for improving.

If this score is too high or impossible, than i have a buggy whdload version, that run had a glitch, whatever, that i can understand. Believe it or not but this is the case, I always play by the rules as to my better knowledge. I don't try to be better than anyone, I just try to have fun and know new Amiga games, as more often than not, almost all rounds are games i've never played.

Graham, if you feel there is any reason to invalidate my score(s) please do so. Peace.

[Graham Humphrey]

Thanks for the lengthy explanation. I don't see any reason to invalidate your score as you haven't done anything wrong (and if you have you're keeping it well hidden). I can kind of see why other people would be curious because it's a pretty massive score but we see these things quite a lot, mainly because some people seem to be far too talented (which is very selfish as it doesn't give terminally mediocre people like me a chance to win) so it still stands as far as I'm concerned. Move along, nothing to see here...

[john4p]

When I saw the link to the video I was eagerly expecting some new technique how to get the most out of the last track. Then I saw 0 seconds left at the end(?!).

Then I watched the end of the marshes: 3 seconds left. WTF?! I thought.

Then I was confused and this all smelled a bit fishy to me.

Only after a while I realized you maybe didn't watch the video and got inspired by its awesomeness () but rather just were surprised by its final score.

Now everything is cleared up - I apologize if something may have sounded like an accusation.

Really an outstanding score!

[capehorn]

Xpect, I will admit that I was one of the people who privately doubted that score. Obviously I am new here and you are well respected and I can see from previous competition results that you are a talented gamer, and I respect that.

When I joined this competition, I had a close look at the scoring system to help maximise my score. I found that if you drive through all the tracks at a good speed, but don't pick up any other points, such as jumping logs, going under trucks on the motorway etc and not taking into account time bonuses, you score approximately 33 million points, just from the act of driving from the beginning of the game to the end.

Then you get points for every second you have left at the end of each track. On the first track, you get 50k for each second, on the second, you get 100k, etc up to 300k on track six, then the bonuses are 400k for track seven and 500k for track eight. Based on my experience (and like you I have played this game a lot recently, even before the competition was announced), I estimated that the best possible time remaining you could have on each track would be:

1 - 20s
2 - 25s
3 - 15s
4 - 12s
5 - 25s
6 - 30s
7 - 30s
8 - 6s

FWIW, I have never achieved any of those times on any of those tracks ever, let alone even come close to getting all of those times on the same runthrough. Those are just my estimates of what the best times are, I might be wrong about them.

Based on that scoring system the highest score possible in the game is 71.4m.

You also score small points (50k) for each time you make a jump over a log, rock, tree or on the marsh level, say you make 20 in a game that is an extra million or so. The only other way to score points that I know of is to drive under a lorry on the motorway level. You get 500k for this, but it really is pot luck and I have never managed to get more than 3 on one go.

So add these points on and we are looking at a theoretical maximum score of approximately 75m.

That is why I was suspicious, because you score really is bordering on perfection. That and seeing everyone else on the thread bettering their score 500k at a time and you coming along and blowing 12m off the top score.

I'm writing this out for two reasons. You said that it may be possible that you were using a buggy WHDload with a different scoring system. Have a look at the times that I wrote above. Where these the kind of times you were setting? If you answer yes, I will drop this altogether and believe you. The second reason is because if you have achieved that score properly, that it is a DAMN fine score and to show just how far ahead of the rest of us you were.

[rexsu]

I haven't played much at this game (not too fan and I watch the Olympics Games) so I don't know if a such score is possible or not.
But I think Xpect has the talent to make huge scores in any game
So ... Bravo

[Graham Humphrey]

After all that drama...

One day to go

[john4p]

I just did a savestate-run (and thus I won't post any scores from now an as this could be seen as "training difficult parts using savestates") because I wanted to know what's possible. I didn't do any mistakes (using quicksave/quickrestore on each track).


Let's see:




Track 1: 19 seconds left (was almost 20), 5,247,185 points




Track 2: 23 seconds left, 12,360,710 points




Track 3: 26 seconds left, 20,772,440 points




Track 4: 22 seconds left, 29,768,630 points




Track 5: 31 seconds left, 41,977,020 points




Track 6: 38 seconds left, 59,688,140 points (4 or 5 "Yeehaa"s)




Track 7: 42 seconds left, 81,250,910 points




Track 8: 12 seconds left, 92,077,745 points (equalling 184,155,490 points in the normal version if there was no overflow)

Btw., all done with automatic transmission...


So xpect's score is very possible, but you have to be very good at the 3 final tracks (where the score explodes).

[capehorn]

I admit I did the same thing last night and used savestates. I only got 72m! I guess I am nowhere near as good as I thought I was (even using SAVESTATES!). TWELVE seconds on the final lap?? I only got 6.

I also got an authentic score of 64,383,485. I did this before I did my savestate runthrough, although if anyone doesn't believe me I will retract it.

[john4p]

You probably just missed the majority of the time pods at the marshes last part - they give a ton of points.

[capehorn]

If those scores are possible then my calculations are way off. I retract my suspicions of Xpect.

[john4p]

Yeah, well, I do, too. Amazing score, xpect!

And I hope your enjoyment of this competition isn't destroyed...

[Graham Humphrey]

Last try for me. Slightly better but still can't crack track seven and I suppose I never will...



40,320,420