High Score Competition (April: Starfort)

[tmop69]

@globeron 78K is a great score! I've beaten my previous score with now 60740 points, but 78K is tough...

 

This time on a real TI (PAL) on 32" TV.

 

 

Edited March 4, 2023 by tmop69

[+InsaneMultitasker]

Classic99, default difficulty level, keyboard.   20 or so dots to get to the blue level. doh!

 

[globeron]

89,300 Batocera/Mame with Suzo Joystick 🕹 

(And 61,350 on a single Ms. Pac-man, extra life at 10,000).

 

Edited March 10, 2023 by globeron

[tmop69]

After some poor attempts to improve my previous best score at 60K I was really thinking to stop (also due to the 85K of @InsaneMultitasker and 89K of @globeron) , but today I've got 83.360 points (on a PAL TI + CRT). So, I'll continue. 🙂  Let's see if it's be possible to try to reach a 100K score.

[+InsaneMultitasker]

8 hours ago, tmop69 said:

Let's see if it's be possible to try to reach a 100K score

I like stretch goals

 

[+mizapf]

I'm still too bad ... tried on 60Hz. I'll retry with 50 Hz. The ghosts are really good at surrounding, and the rate of new lives is a bit low. Nevertheless, I still favor MunchMan, which has more "racing" feeling.

 

 

Edit: I'm a bit surprised how good the other high scores are. In the early rounds I managed to catch most ghosts, while in later rounds, they start recovering right after me eating the pill, so I just have a few seconds to get them, and this is mostly one or two. But am I missing something?

 

[globeron]

@mizapf eat as many ghosts per pill and jumping fruit if possible that increases the score rapidly. Also move between side of screen through the tunnel as ghosts follow Ms Pac-man. You are right there are traps and try to clear them asap or when no ghosts are nearby.

 

I also find Ms.Pac-Man kind of slow, later levels things speed up, but not like Munch-Man also my favorite!
 

 In Batocera/Mame I can change settings to speed up with frame skipping, then Ms. Pac-Man goes faster. I compared with the real TI but it is slow as well.

 

@tmop69 that’s my goal as well to break the 100K score, it is not so easy and did not find a pattern to play to go single path, eat all ghosts and fruits in 1 go.

[+InsaneMultitasker]

After the first banana maze, the fruits are random.  Getting a few random bananas in the later maps can boost your score to compensate for not being able to eat as many (or any) ghosts, though I seem to get the 100 point cherry fifty percent of the time.   I always try to gather the ghosts together so that I can eat 2-3 of them even in the later levels.  Ms. PacMan isn't able to "creep away" from the ghosts quite like the arcade, so the tunnels are very important. 

[+InsaneMultitasker]

This is the fifth set of maps (a repeat of the third set, after the four blue maps).   I was behind a ghost and even though Ms pacman didn't visually overlap the ghost, the coincidence tolerance felt otherwise    

 

I focused on gathering the ghosts, especially on the first two mazes of each group, since the energizers last the longest at the start of each 'set'. This is probably the best I've ever done on the TI.

 

Classic99 60Hz.

 

 

(Ms. PacMan is one of the few games where I usually got my quarter's worth and then some, while playing at the supermarket 'arcade'.  Galaga was my other go-to favorite.)

[tmop69]

@mizapf I've not noticed differences in difficulty between PAL and NTSC versions. Munch Man is surely faster (expecially when you eat the pills), however I think it's easier than Ms.Pac Man, due to the fixed maze and the fact that eated ghosts are not respawning until the end of the pill's effect.
The pill length is really short after the initial mazes and, as explained by @InsaneMultitasker, you need to cluster the ghosts before eating the pill. This is easy in the first two mazes, so you can score approx. 22K/24K points in total. From maze 3 to 5 you can eat 3 clustered ghosts, sometimes also 4, but it's risky. It's better to try to eat a fruit.

 

@globeron I think that there are no safe paths, since the ghosts have semi-random movements. This was an improvement vs Pac Man, in which there are safe paths and also resting points to have a break (there are some videos online).

I suggest to try also the Atari VCS version of this game, that has worst graphics, but it's faster than the TI version.  

Anyway, the 150K score is really difficult to beat. Moving from 80K to 100K looks feasible, but from 80K to 150K... The battle now seems only open for the second prize... 😞 

 

 

[+mizapf]

Yes, I learned some good paths for running in MunchMan after a short time.

 

I am really, really bad at Ms. Pacman, oh my. Struggling to reach my 34k points again ...

[globeron]

I made a video….but now I saw the wow 150k score! I need to go back to the drawing board.

[globeron]

 

Hi 

@InsaneMultitasker  you are the winner and to select the next game for April 2023!

 

Ms. Pac-Man

---------------

InsaneMultitasker - 149,430
globeron              -  89,300
tmop69               -  83,360
digdugnate          -  45,310
mizapf                -  36,490
 

 

[+InsaneMultitasker]

43 minutes ago, globeron said:

Hi 

@InsaneMultitasker  you are the winner and to select the next game for April 2023!

Cool.  The only other time I got a TI game high score was as a teenager; I entered the Parsec contest at our local computer store (Competition Computer, in Milwaukee) and for my prize, I selected either the Forth manual or the Editor Assembler manual (I don't recall for certain).  

 

I read the first post and could not think of something that hasn't been played;  I am not very imaginative when it comes to games    I''ll think about this some more today but if anyone has a recommendation, I'm all for it!

[tmop69]

19 hours ago, InsaneMultitasker said:

Cool.  The only other time I got a TI game high score was as a teenager; I entered the Parsec contest at our local computer store (Competition Computer, in Milwaukee) and for my prize, I selected either the Forth manual or the Editor Assembler manual (I don't recall for certain).  

 

I read the first post and could not think of something that hasn't been played;  I am not very imaginative when it comes to games    I''ll think about this some more today but if anyone has a recommendation, I'm all for it!

 

When I've checked in February, in addition to MS. Pac Man, I've found also these classic games that should not have been already played here:

Demon attack, Hustle, Moon sweeper, Micro surgeon, Fathom.

 

 

[Count9929A]

1 hour ago, tmop69 said:

Demon attack

was selected but decided to skip because it's impossible to finish level 2 (in NTSC)

[+InsaneMultitasker]

I was thinking of TI Runner for something maze-like or Clickety which is a simple game by Marc Hull.

[+arcadeshopper]

On 4/3/2023 at 8:54 AM, InsaneMultitasker said:

I was thinking of TI Runner for something maze-like or Clickety which is a simple game by Marc Hull.

TI runner!

 

[+InsaneMultitasker]

On 4/2/2023 at 8:54 AM, globeron said:

 

Hi 

@InsaneMultitasker  you are the winner and to select the next game for April 2023!

 

Who doesn't like a bit of computer-generated cardio?  Let's go with TI Runner for April      I am out of town for a few days so if someone reading this topic has the necessary game files and posts them, I would be most thankful for their help!  Otherwise, I will try to locate the files this weekend.  Thanks!

[+OLD CS1]

56 minutes ago, InsaneMultitasker said:

TI Runner

¿Qué es eso?

[+InsaneMultitasker]

28 minutes ago, OLD CS1 said:

¿Qué es eso?

https://tigameshelf.net/asm.htm

 

Great repository.  The game is listed about 1/3 to 1/2 of the way down the page.  Search for 'runner'.  The necessary files and instructions can be downloaded from the site.

 

I'm guessing there are other games on this site that haven't been played in the contest.

 

 

[pixelpedant]

A fun quote from the author, posted on a video I did about TI Runner, a while back:

 

Quote

Wow, this is great! I am the "E" in EB Software. My college roommate (the "B") and I wrote this game when we were freshmen computer science students at Cal Poly. Why did we pick the TI? That's all we had! The music is all original, by the way. An EE student down the hall had a guitar, so we asked him to write some intro music for us. In a college dorm in the early 80's we had no problem getting people to test the game! 😀 Thanks for the nice review.

 

Manuals of Interest:

- Star Runner (Databiotics cart version)

- TI Runner Level Editor

- TI Runner

[+InsaneMultitasker]

I made it to level 4.  

 

[+Vorticon]

"At the beginning of any level, function "5" (proceed) will advance to the level. There is a way to go to any level, but we will leave it up to you to find it. If you get desperate, write us. All levels are solvable."

 

Tantalizing  Anyone figured it out?

[globeron]

On 4/5/2023 at 4:49 AM, InsaneMultitasker said:

https://tigameshelf.net/asm.htm

 

Great repository.  The game is listed about 1/3 to 1/2 of the way down the page.  Search for 'runner'.  The necessary files and instructions can be downloaded from the site.

 

I'm guessing there are other games on this site that haven't been played in the contest.

 

 

 

Here is the TI RUNNER collection I had a a kid on Disks. I have good memories playing this a lot  (as my neighbor had Lode Runner on the Commodore 64)

 

Unfortunately we cannot run it as stand-alone program as it needs to load the levels from a file (e.g. I want to run it in Batocera without disk access)

 

1.  TI-RUNNER 1   (Original)

     Editor/Assembler - option 3

     DSK1.TI-RUNNER     

     (LEVEL28 File needed)

 

2.  TI-RUNNER 4 (Original)

     Editor/Assembler - option 5

     DSK1.TIRUNNER

      (LEVEL28 File needed)

 

 

 

2. TI-RUNNER 2 

     Extended Basic loads automatically from DSK1.LOAD (or RUN "DSK1.LOAD")

 

    Editor/Assembler  - option 5

    DSK1.TIRUNNER2A

    (LEVELS2 File needed)

 

 

 

 

3.  TI-RUNNER 3

 

     Extended Basic loads automatically from DSK1.LOAD (or RUN "DSK1.LOAD")

     Select 1 - for TI Runner v3

 

    or 

 

     Editor/Assembler - option 5

     DSK1.R

     (U File needed for levels)

 

 

Extended Basic only:

 

Select option 2

 

 

 

These are the levels I made as a kid 🙂

 

"HELLO THERE"

 

"OH WAT MOOI" = "OH WHAT IS IT BEAUTIFUL"

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

TI-RUNNER1.dsk TI-RUNNER3.dsk TI-RUNNER4.dsk TI-RUNNER2.dsk