Re: Succeeding at Battlezone with TQM.

Damn!!! Great post! I can't wait to put on my BZ CPO and start playing
again!

btw - High Score Save Mod?

Thanks Doug!
-roy-

----- Original Message -----
From: Doug Jefferys <dougj@hwcn.org>
To: <vectorlist@lists.cc.utexas.edu>
Sent: Thursday, August 05, 1999 8:42 PM
Subject: Succeeding at Battlezone with TQM.

> On Thu, 5 Aug 1999, Christopher X. Candreva wrote:
> > On Thu, 5 Aug 1999, Clay Cowgill wrote:
> >
> > > Big difference though-- BZ gives you two big handles to reef on, and a
> > > compelling reason to pull back on both hard (the cruise missiles).
> >
> > There's your problem -- drive INTO the missiles. You have less time
> > to aim, but the missles have less time to serpentine around you. Pulling
> > back is certain death. Apparently without the step -- litteraly. :-)
>
> Damn, I love Battlezone.
>
> <BRAG>Personal high score: 1,201,000.</BRAG>
>
> <HUMBLEREMINDER>The world record is about 5.3 million.</HUMBLEREMINDER>
>
> My ROM revision stops giving me supertanks from what appears to be a
> random score between 700K and 800K. The game switches back to regular
> tanks from that point forward, but continues to place them in the "hard"
> places and angles that it did with the supertanks. Saucer hunting is
> once again possible, but much harder than it was at the start of the
> game.
>
> I used to think this was a bug, but since it comes at a random interval,
> as opposed to a hardcoded 800,000 points, it may be intentional. (Since
> the player has mastered the game, give him back the slower, more time-
> consuming target that he *hasn't* spent much time fighting...)
>
> One thing that is a bug, albeit an extremely unlikely one:
>
> I've used the Battlezone High Score save mod on my board set, and changed
> a byte to save the top 9 high scores instead of the top 3 scores. Since
> the game displays one tank beside your score for every 100K, my high score
> table fills the vector table; the "Extra tank at xxxxx and yyyyy points"
> text flickers out midway through the message. I consider this a "bug"
> since it's possible, though by no means likely, that a unit that runs
> 24/7 (in an arcade with a lot of Battlezone experts :-) could conceivably
> encounter this in the field. It's similar to the "too many bonus ships
> slow down the game" problem in Asteroids.
>
> Hacks on my "one of these years" list:
>
> 1) Make it so that only 5 tanks are displayed beside high scores,
> regardless of how high the score is. With that 5.3M world record
> game, the monitor was probably trying to draw a tank on the side
> of the cabinet :-)
>
> 2) Figure out where in the code it switches back from supertanks to
> regular tanks, in order to judge whether it's a bug or not.
>
> 3) Hack in a "turn-180-degrees" button. I'd love to hide behind a
> cube, press this button, and watch a missile run away from me,
> or add a "jump-three-feet-to-the-left" button and admire a missile
> from the side :-)
>
> Now to gameplay:
>
> Missiles come at you in one of (a small number? 3-5?) different possible
> tracks.
>
> All but two can be defeated trivially by *staying still* and rotating
> your tank a little to the left of the spot in the sky where the missile
> first appears. The missile's final approach will be straight down
> your gunsights. The two "bad missile tracks" are relatively rare by
> comparison.
>
> One missile track has the missile doing a hard turn from your right,
> straight across to the left, and into you. It seems to zigzag in
> the horizontal direction a little more erratically early on in its
> flight path. It is best nailed (assuming you stop as soon as a
> missile appears) by firing just as it's turning. The bullet will
> hit the missile side-on. This missile track can be avoided by pushing
> forward at just the right time during its horizontal move.
>
> Another missile track appears to be very similar to the one above, and
> kills by making a horizontal move and nailing you from the left side.
> Unlike the missile above, you usually see the inside a corner of the
> missile as it turns into you.
>
> (This may simply be the same missile track as the "shoot it in the
> side" missile, but seen from a tank that's been turned 15-20 degrees
> to the left.)
>
> Since I don't see either variation frequently, and since I can't see
> where the missile "would have gone" on my "long-range kills", I'm
> guessing that each of these types (or this type, if it's only one
> track seen from a different angle) are more susceptible to the long-
> range kill.
>
> My missile strategy:
>
> 1) Stop when it shows up. Turn slightly to the left. Identify the
> missile shortly it hits the ground. Choose between long-range or
> conventional kill.
>
> 2.1) Long-range kill: Fire immediately and start backing up for a
> second shot. Many of my "missed" first shots end up as either
> conventional kills, or "push forward and hope it misses you
> because you won't necessarily have a round ready in time for
> the side-kill type".
>
> 2.2) Conventional kill: Don't move, just watch the missile come
> closer. Fire on the last move forward to you where you can't
> miss, or nail it with a sideways kill for the one (or two?)
> missile tracks that have to be killed sideways. Move forward
> when you fire; it won't hurt in the straight-in kills, and it
> might save your butt if you miss the sideways kill.
>
> 3) Set up for next kill.
>
> If you pulled back for any reason, move forward. There may be a
> cube that's now six inches from your rear bumper that'll get you
> stuck when the next missile/tank appears.
>
> If you turned left, rotate right a bit. Since each missile
> prompts a few degrees of left-rotate, you may end up with an
> obstacle in your field of view.
>
> My general strategy:
>
> 1) The usual "run down the 45-degree line and kill" strategy.
>
> 2) Making sure there are no obstacles anywhere near you after each kill:
>
> The key to killing missiles is to make them predictable. If you
> expect a missile to go one way, but it has to jump an obstacle or
> steer around it, you'll miss your shot and die.
>
> The key to killing tanks is *not* to get jammed up against an
> obstacle, ever, so you can make every kill a "conventional" one.
>
> The best way to do both of these things is to keep a mental map
> of where the nearest obstacles are likely to be, and to keep moving
> so that there's (a) nothing near you, and (b) if you haven't moved
> forward in a while, assume the computer's put an obstacle behind
> you and move forward to get away from it.
>
> (Yes, sometimes the computer sprinkles the ground with new objects.
> This is known as the "You trip over an imaginary invisible deceased
> turtle that a mad wizard teleported behind you" method of dying :)
>
> 3) Ingore saucers whenever there's a supertank on the screen.
> One potshot is allowed while rotating to kill the tank. Do not
> stop turning or moving - just take the shot and hope for the best.
> Never chase saucers with supertanks on, because they move to give
> the supertanks a better shot at you.
>
> With missiles, it's similar - *one* shot at a saucer between
> missiles. No more. And don't attempt to get a long-range kill
> on a missile if you're taking potshots at the saucer.
>
> These strategies will get you into the 300-500K level, maybe 800K if
> you're lucky. You'll also learn little tricks like seeing the fading
> dot of a new tank *before* the radar sweep hits him and turning in his
> direction before the "blip", or seeing the little nudge forward that
> a tank will make just before it fires its first shot at you, and
> being able to take evasive action before his bullet is on his way.
>
> You'll most likely die by mis-identifying a missile, getting caught
> by a new obstacle after a long missile-chase, or by trying to kill a
> supertank on those semi-rare occasions where you miss your one shot
> at a tank who's forced you to run away backwards while you wait for
> him to shoot-and-miss.
>
> For endurance play - do all this, and take steps to *not* get killed
> by the "one-in-a-million dumb luck" things. Like saucers appearing
> directly in front of you when you're about to kill a missile, or the
> tank that hit a pyramid, turned, backed up, and moved forward... and
> did it again, only to be *facing you* when it stopped and fired while
> you were rotating to keep up. Like supertanks appearing right in front
> of you, facing you - and knowing instantly whether you can kill it
> immediately, or if you have to turn *away* from it and run away for
> a second or two before killing it "conventionally".
>
> -=+=-
>
> OK, so what the hell does an old buzzword like Total Quality Management
> (TQM) have to do with succeeding at Battlezone?
>
> Battlezone is a great game if you've ever wondered why software QA
> types are so picky about process and metrics. There are only a few
> ways to get killed in Battlezone, and nearly *every* death can be
> explained in terms of "operator error" of one form or another.
>
> Since you have only five tanks (3, plus one at 15K and one at 100K)
> per game, the only way to get a score of "x" is to ensure that you
> get, on average, "x/5" points per tank.
>
> Furthermore, since Battlezone isn't a game of reflexes, the existence of a
> world record at 5M is evidence that, at _worst_, the game only puts you in
> "impossible" situations every million points or so.
>
> The corollary of that is that *if you're getting less than a million
> points per tank, you're probably making mistakes that you can prevent*.
> Here's a partial list from the top of my head. Only the last two items on
> the list are "accidents"; the rest are variations on operator error:
>
> - Rotated too long when turning to face enemy.
> - Turned to face enemy, fired, and missed.
> - Didn't run enemy down line of sight correctly, allowing him to kill me.
> - Ran enemy down line of sight just fine, but pulled back too long before
> rotating. By the time I got him in my sights, he fired at point-blank
> range.
> - Chased saucer.
> - Missed missile and died.
> - Missed missile and didn't back up to get enough time for second shot.
> - Missed missile and backed up, but hit obstacle and couldn't get far
> enough back for second shot.
> - Obstacle in missile's path made missile move differently than expected.
> - Thought it was different type of missile.
> - Damn! I _always_ seem to get killed by "that type of missile".
> - Thought I had enough room in front of tank to kill it head-on. Missed.
> - Thought I had enough room in front of tank to kill it head-on. Didn't.
> - Didn't *listen* for enemy tank shooting at me while I took a
> potshot at the saucer.
> - Didn't *listen closely enough* to hear enemy tank shooting at me
> within a few milliseconds of me shooting at the saucer. Sounded
> a bit like an echo.
> - Didn't *listen closely enough* to hear enemy tank shooting at me
> while saucer-exploding sound was playing loudly, mostly drowning
> out the noise of the enemy shot.
> - Didn't *hear* enemy tank shooting at me because I fired _exactly_
> at the same time the enemy tank did and I _couldn't_ have heard it.
> - Saucer was behind me and passed in front of me, covering 90% of
> the viewscreen just as I was about to shoot the missile.
>
> Once I started "taking notes" on how I died, my game improved drastically,
> as I was able to stop making the mistakes that kept killing me off every
> 50-100K points, which means that I now live long enough to get killed
> every 200-300K points, usually by misidentifying a missile and firing
> in the wrong portion of its flight.
>
> And I still don't think I've ever had a "couldn't have heard the enemy
> tank" kill in my life. (Had plenty of the other variations, though!)
>
> The "Saucer flew in front of me" death is truly rare. It's happened to me
> twice since I started playing Battlezone seriously, which means you can
> expect it to happen once every 5 hours or so.
>
> Interestingly - if you hear the "saucer died" sound without shooting the
> saucer, it usually means an enemy tank has shot it. This happens once
> every half hour or so, but only in your field of view every 2-3 hours.
> Sadly, you don't get the points for letting the enemy kill the saucer
> for you.
>
> Later,
> Doug.
>
> --
> dougj |
> @ |
> hwcn.org |
>
Received on Thu Aug 5 20:14:08 1999