EAB/Lemon Super League 2013: Round 10 - Pinball Fantasies

[Graham Humphrey]

EAB/Lemon Super League 2013: Round 10 - Pinball Fantasies

Starts: 00:01 August 18 Finishes: 23:59 September 7

Rules

Post a picture of your score here with the score written underneath. Enter as often as you like. Only scores achieved during the round's time frame count.

No cheating of any kind (including score leeching) - this includes save states. No continues/passwords allowed. If you suspect anyone of cheating please let us know in private - anyone found guilty will be banned for the entire season.

We will be playing three tables (Partyland, Billion Dollar Gameshow and Speed Devils) in one-player mode only. Your score from each table will be added up to give a total.

Remember, anyone can join in at any time. Have fun and feel free to ask any questions you may have.

Downloads

- Disk 1, Disk 2, Disk 3
- AGA Disk 1, AGA Disk 2 (fully working version)
- WHDLoad-installed

Extras

- Results and standings
- Full rules and FAQ (incorporating the Hall of Fame)
- Lemon thread
- Live League Ladder

[Phantom]

Just a question. We will play each table and the best scores from each three tables will be added to make the total score? For instance, someone plays all tables and inserts his total score (sum of 3 tables). Next, he plays again one table and achieve a higher score in a specific table than before, this will count to the same total score, meaning that it will replace the previous one? Confused...

[capehorn]

Post the best score you achieve on each table. Then total them up.

Afterwards, if you improve on any table, post that score and add up your new total. So your best score on each table contributes to your total score.

See previous rounds for an example, i.e. http://eab.abime.net/eab-s-competiti...ll-dreams.html

[Phantom]

Ok, thanks for the tip. Here's my first try.

25.531.810 - PartyLand

[Phantom]

How you can disable that annoying shift-method that WindozeXP has? The one that you press Shift-key repeatedly and a menu appears.

[capehorn]

That's called Stickykeys, it's in Accessibility in Control Panel, I think.

[Phantom]

Yes, but I cannot find such a thing. Keep searching damn OS...

[Phantom]

30.914.880

[Phantom]

35.584.900

[capehorn]

To the mods:

I'm afraid we might have a small problem with this game. One of the things about Pinball Fantasies is that when you beat the previous high score you get an extra ball as a bonus. Now, if you download an adf, they usually have the highscores of the owner of the disk. I've downloaded the ones in the OP and the high scores are low, so every time I play it I get an extra ball. That's going to be different for people playing on real Amigas, who, presumably are going to have their old scores saved and are going to have to post big scores before they trigger the extra ball. So people like me using a fresh adf will get an extra ball every time we play, especially if we load the adf from scratch each time. People using a real amiga, or an adf with their own scores saved, or a downloaded adf with someone else's scores saved that are quite high, are not going to get extra balls every time they play. Obviously, having an extra ball every time you play is going to affect the score in a big way.

Put simply, the game will award extra balls depending on the top score saved on the disk. As some of us are probably going to be playing using different adfs and some will use real Amigas with their own high scores saved, the game will award extra balls differently for some of us.

The only thing I can think of to level this out is for us all to play the same adf, which is unfair on real amiga users and far from ideal as it basically means we are all going to be playing 4 ball games every time.

A side-issue is that most adfs, including the one posted above, have a bug that doesn't add on held bonuses on the last ball (the games says the held bonus is worth 0 when it isn't). It's nowhere near as big a problem as the extra ball one, but it's still not right as it can affect scores if a big bonus is earned.

[Phantom]

37.999.430

[Graham Humphrey]

I wasn't aware of this issue with extra balls so thanks to Capehorn for flagging this.

Firstly I wonder if the cheat code "VACUUM CLEANER" might help here, it resets the high scores so I wonder if it resets back to the game defaults or whatever happens to be saved on the disk originally? If that worked and we all had the same scores to beat that would be a lot fairer.

It is a big issue because I can't play the linked ADFs as the ECS version doesn't work on my 040 machine. I play the CD32 version via WHDLoad and I cleared my high score file before playing today and the top score by default on mine is 100m. If that's less on other versions then obviously we have a bit of a problem but if the cheat code doesn't work then I am not sure what the best way round this is.

[capehorn]

Using the Vacuum Cleaner code is a very nice idea, but I just tried it on the adf and even though I got a message saying the scores had been cleared, they hadn't, and then the keyboard stopped working, so I couldn't even start a game.

[Something seems funny about the linked adf, the default scores look wrong (the third score is blank and the fourth score is 20 - also the hi-scores page on the title screen is blank when it should list the scores).]

I've just downloaded an IPF and the default high scores are 50m for Partyland and 100m for the others. Maybe if we could find an adf that was clean and had no saved scores and wasn't buggy in any other way, that would be the best way to go?

[Marcuz]

just out of curiosity, as I will not play (I suck at flippers) what does it mean "score leeching"?

[Phantom]

50.970.690 - Party Land

[vagrant]

@Marcuz
Using a loophole in gameplay to accumulate score.. eg. some games have endless enemies that you can keep destroying without effort just to boost your score.

As with Pinball Fantasies; Yeh I think best solution would be finding an adf version that will at least save high scores? Whether that exists at all is another matter
I don't think the extra ball will make much difference at the top of the table since the biggest scores will come from runs involving multiple extra balls anyway.. I'll be playing the whdload version.

[Graham Humphrey]

Although, of course, score leeching is impossible in pinball games so doesn't really apply here

@capehorn

Yep, those scores are the defaults on my version. I think ideally we need to find a version that has those scores. Although we can't link to IPFs on here (no such rule on Lemon however...) surely there must be a 'proper' ADF somewhere? It seems like there's some sort of problem with most versions which is a pain.

@who

Not sure if saving high scores is particularly important here... indeed I think making sure everyone is on a level playing field every time is more important. Although as you say the really top scores will end up with multiple extra balls anyway it can make a big difference lower down and that sort of unfair advantage is one I am keen to avoid.

Anyway, scores:



Partyland: 15,382,730



Billion Dollar Gameshow: 10,909,810



Speed Devils: 22,223,190

Total: 48,515,730

[mikey2002kent]

Not wishing to butt in also but there is also a bug on partyland where the game will give you 3 billion points if you collect the jackpot at same time as beat your highscore

Ive done it before.... don't take this as my score, i'll play it properely later on

[capehorn]

Originally Posted by Graham Humphrey

@capehorn

Yep, those scores are the defaults on my version. I think ideally we need to find a version that has those scores. Although we can't link to IPFs on here (no such rule on Lemon however...) surely there must be a 'proper' ADF somewhere? It seems like there's some sort of problem with most versions which is a pain.

I love Amiga games but I don't understand all that much about the technical side of Amigas, and the majority of posts on EAB go over my head. I don't know what the difference is between ADFs and IPFs, other than the fact that ADFs seem to mostly be cracked and IPF are mostly clean (is that the only difference?). So I dunno if this is a silly question, but could someone not just made an adf file out of the IPF with the default scores?

[mihcael]

Originally Posted by capehorn

...So I dunno if this is a silly question, but could someone not just made an adf file out of the IPF with the default scores?

The makers of IPF format control the usage of those files and would likely prevent us from doing so.