We have recently been having head to head races to 1 million. Can we also make that a track on here?
We have been playing on "any rank/difficulty." I know someone had said "Hardest" is default settings in another thread, but this not true across ports. Most ports start on "Normal" or Rank B. Arcade1Up emulators and many others start on Rank A. It's unclear if the original were A or B, but I believe they were A. At the time, B was not called normal, it was called "2nd level of difficulty."
D way only used because it was arbitrarily decided that's what should be played for two tracks, Marathon and Tournament settings. A and C will reach a Killscreen at level 0, B and D will continue forever.
... So the moral of the story is "it's complicated." We've recently moved more towards inclusion, i.e. our group let's anyone play on any settings, since the default settings were likely the easiest, and if you want to make things harder on yourself, more power to you. There is a slight chance you actually gain a speed advantage at higher ranks since bugs come out faster earlier, but that's as of yet unproven.
For Race to 1 Million on this board, I'd accept any decision. If you want the consistency of Rank D for all, that's cool. If you want to make it "any%" style like we already play, that's cool, too.
Taking a look at the current World Record, the settings, which sho at 0:03 are Rank A, which is the easiest, and which I agree are the "default," though lots of ports start on B, or "Normal." Many consoles, and Class of 81, for instance.
I was just confused by this: "If you run an official copy of the game whether be a port, or a legitimate arcade rom, these settings are typically the ones that are fresh when you start, and does not involve messing with any dip switches or settings in the in game menus.
The default settings are
Lives: Start with 3, get one for 20k points, one for 70k points, then everyone after is 70k points
Difficulty: Hardest If I recall correctly some Namco Arcade Ports sometimes don't point this out as hardest, but an easy way to check this is, if after round 1, and every round after enemies fire at you as they come in for formation. So I'd suggest playing rounds 1-3 and paying attention to what it is, if not change it till you get to the correct one.
These settings are essentially the "fresh out of the box" rules for Galaga and these are the important ones that are checked for verifying runs."
Difficulty: Hardest is D, not A, so I just wanted to be clear about the settings. I assume they are A/Easy 3_20k/70k/70k
EDIT: Other ways you can tell it is A/Easy is it is the only setting where bugs do not fire on Stage 18, though that's not applicable for a couple of the tracks
Are you saying that my runs would be invalid because I am playing on the easiest difficulty? I just used the default settings on the emulator. The emulator is the most popular one that people use, so everyone has been playing on easy.
Or are you making an argument that all difficulties should be accepted?
And to be clear, this run: https://www.speedrun.com/galaga/run/yo24vw7z is done on Rank D : "Hardest" and is clearly displayed at the beginning of the run. As the rules currently stand, it should not have been accepted. Again, I, personally, don't have a problem with that, or even a problem with allowing all settings A-D, Easy-Hardest as the differences are negligible and yet to be proven conclusively. I just want to point out there is an inconsistency.
@Sintec that will be for the moderators to decide. I think Rank A is the most honest interpretation of "Default," but the truth is it is not default on all ports. Rank D is most certainly not "Default" on anything, especially not MAME. It is just what old Twin Galaxies tracks used for Marathon and Tournament points settings, which I think was a colossally confusing and limiting decision IMO. On top of being non-default, and something most people don't have access to in an arcade, there is just so little difference between them. Nobody is 5 million points or several minutes better on A over D, the differences entirely disappear at Stage 32. Many of them start on "normal," which is "B." So I guess to me the rules are just unclear.
EDIT: I think your records should stand and are fine. The way things are written vs the reality of ports and settings just needs to be clarified
I would be completely down to add 1 million points when we figure out this whole scramble with the ruleset, that's completely okay with me.
Various ports of the game call the difficulty a different thing, from what I understand the easiest way to verify the difficulty it's supposed to be is when enemies begin shooting on incoming in the second round.
If I remember correctly that is the "Standard Fresh Arcade Machine" that's why that's the rules set in place. It's to make it as Default as possible, the problem and confusion starts when the default for every port is called something different.
Namco is a pain with it's ports. They are rarely consistent with them, and from what I learned when I used to moderate the original pac-man, is that a lot of the time there's variance between each port of the game that makes it different from the last and generally you have to take things on a case by case basis.
So this was decided when the board was first created (like four years ago ish I believe). My mind is a bit hazy from that long ago to be honest. I've gradually learned more and more, and attempted my best to research the game as much as possible and I believe that "Hardest" for the original arcade game was the "default". Namco calling this normal because it is the "default difficulty" makes sense. We do have to play a little bit of guessing with this though. Not all ports are created equal and namco is known to get lazy with the way they handle ports on occassion.
I understand some of the confusion a bit, however I don't understand how that run is inconsistent and shouldn't have been verified.
That being said, I'm willing to discuss the rules, like I said my mind is a bit hazy from that point in time, and I know I don't know everything about this game, so if I made a mistake, I made a mistake and I have no problem in admitting that.
If you would like, I can give you some contact information and we can discuss more of this.
From what I remember your runs checked out I wanted to go check them but you put your videos on private.
I won't take down any of your runs and if a rule change happens it would be grandfathered in. (But please don't put them on private anymore)
Apologies, I uploaded new runs so I privated some runs that were obsolete so my dashboard wasn't as cluttered. I'll keep them public from now on.
As for rule changes, I don't know as much as FootofGod about the game so I cant really give an opinion, that's probably something you and him will have to figure out.
@lozplyr89 Thanks for the reply. I have done a lot of research on this topic with some of the top high score players of the game, and knowledgeable people in the arcade community, and we've discovered a lot. Let me clarify a bit based on what I know:
Ports use two sets of words to refer to the "Ranks," and they can be found by a couple of variables in gameplay.
Arcade / Other ports Rank A = "Easy" - ONLY mode where bugs do not shoot on Stage 18 (though they move faster) Rank B = "Normal"/"Medium" - Stage 10 - No shoot NO dive - Stage 18- Bugs shoot, no dive(?) Rank C = "Hard" - Stage 10 - NO shoot NO dive Stage 18+ - Bugs shoot and dive Rank D = "Hardest" - Stage 10+ - Bugs shoot and dive, full speed
Nobody plays B/Normal/Medium much, so I'm not aboslutely sure but the difference is at Stage 18. Anyway, original arcade units and Arcade1Ups came on A/Easy. Class of 81, multicades, and some console ports come on B/Normal/Medium, others on A.
Typically C and D must be changed in settings or dip switches. D/"Hardest" is never default settings to my knowledge, and that's what I wanted to correct. "Default" is a word that should never be used to describe Rank D/ "Hardest" settings. It is only known as common settings because for Marathon and Tournament tracks, that's what it is but that is not the same as Default. Galaga is one of the weirdest tracks in that high scores were originally not done on Default settings to avoid the killscreen that occurs on Ranks A and C. But everyone who has a machine on D has had to open it up and flip the dip switches to change it to that. That's why the category was dead for a while, good luck walking in to an arcade and finding a machine on those settings or a willing participant to let you go back there and poke around at their board.
smkrogman's Stage 255 run is on D. After the grid, it flashes the settings and you can see it say, upside down, "Rank D." Sintec's times show "Rank A" at the same time/place. I would post screenshots, but I'm not sure how besides uploading them to imgur so I'll have to do it a little later.
Again, personally, I think it's simpler to just allow all difficulty settings. The differences speed-wise are minor and not well calculated. There are advantages and disadvantages and if something wins out, people can gravitate towards it, just like they do for ports of games with different languages, etc in other game categories.
Yeah I think that's what it all comes down to, allowing runs from any difficulty. As long you're doing that and you've consistently been doing that (which you have been) then there's no real problem. Maybe change the wording of "default settings" around but that's about it.
And then address FootofGods suggestion about a 1mil run category, ill message him on discord so you guys can talk that through as quickly as possible.
Thank you for being a mod that actually cares lol.
