Defence Force high score

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Antiriad2097
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Defence Force high score

Post by Antiriad2097 »

I dug out my Defence Force casette from the loft this week and as I'd hoped, it still has the piece of paper with my personal best high score from the 80s:

Image

Not the best photo, so for clarification it says...

Wave 73
Straight into astral plane
Score - 784240

It made me wonder, is there an official high score or world record? How do I compare to others' best scores? Has wave 73 ever been bettered? I always used to play for level progression rather than score.

As the note suggests, there are no humans to rescue at this point in the game, it goes straight to the astral plane stage with the skull things.

What I remember most is that the game locked on this stage, with everything freezing for no apparent reason. Is the 73rd wave in Defence Force a kill screen, or was it just bad luck? If its not a kill screen (I always assumed the level generation algorithm broke at this point) are there any other known circumstances that cause a lock up?
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Post by Dbug »

That's quite an impressive score. Never been that far :(
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Post by Antiriad2097 »

I've lost the knack now, but for a while in my teens I played it an awful lot, for hours on end, day after day, as only teens can.

Last time I tried to play it, I only lasted to level 40-something, a long way off my best.

If its a noteworthy score, I'm tempted to brush up on it again and record it for a record attempt. I suspect I'll be average at best, that's usually what I find. I've accepted that usually I'm nowhere near top of the league, but there are just a few games where I can hold my own. This was one of them, but I've nothing for comparison except a couple of old schoold friends.
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Post by Dbug »

I guess we could maintain a sticky post with the current highscores for various games, of course today with emulators/save/speed change, it may be easy to cheat, and editing a screenshot would be even simpler so we would have to rely on people being honest :)
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Post by Chema »

Damn, you caugth me. All my work with to create a believable screenshot with a ridiculously high score for Defence Force to the dustbin :)
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Post by Antiriad2097 »

That's the thing, for a proper World Record you have to record it on VHS (or similar), from start to finish.

Over at the Retro Gaming League, we do rely on player honesty and posted screenshots for our informal gaming. Among friends, it seems to work.

I'm just a little disappointed I don't have a period photo of the screen with my score on it, with the negatives to back it up. All I've got is a bit of paper and my word.
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Post by Dbug »

Antiriad2097 wrote:That's the thing, for a proper World Record you have to record it on VHS (or similar), from start to finish.
Seriously?

Ok, let's say I use an emulator with fast load/save, and the ability to record in a video file. I start to play, each time I reach the end of a level I save a dump file, each time I lose I reload the dump file, oh and I play at half the speed :)

Now I use a video editing software, glue together the sequence, when i get my whole sequence playing nicely all I have to do is to replay the movie on my tv and pretend I'm playing on the Oric, while being filmed doing that.

Hell, I could even disassemble Defence Force and make sure the enemies never jump on me, or to make my ship avoid/shoot enemies that are two close :)

Sure I would not bother doing that, but if there was a serious enough incentive it would definitely be doable :)
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Post by Antiriad2097 »

There's no doubt its doable, but any doubts cast mean the validators will want to see you play, inspect your system etc. There are lots of ways to cheat the system using video evidence, but why bother? I know I can play this game until it hits a kill screen, so it then just becomes a matter of maxing out points.

Incidentally, Twin Galaxies separate emulated game scores from those played on genuine hardware.

And there's always the possibility they'll not accept your score and you'd have to play it 'live' in front of one of their validators... which would be a tad embarrassing if the whole thing was a hoax.
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Post by Dbug »

That was where I wanted to go: The only true evidence is a public demonstration of the player showing the skills - which is not easy or practical for the small Oric world.

I don't doubt your high score is genuine, was just thinking that if we try to maintain a list of Oric highscores some people will try to exploit it by cheating. When I see the number of people who try to cheat on MMORPGs (my domain of professional activity), and how hard it is to detect, then we will have to most probably just accept that people are honest and add it to the list with minimum validation (a screenshot of the highscore page should be enough).
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