Rayman 3 scores

[sfn42]

@Sajiki: You can spare yourself the jump to the Hoodboom, if you actually do the combos in a slightly different way. Just combo the Hoodboom with the piggy bank next to it and then continue with the gems below (those around the hooks). For the second combo, you can then include the 6 gems on the platform at the end of the conveyer, that are usually taken in the beginning of the Hoodboom-combo. To do that, you have to face the final Hoodmonger from the side of the yellow gems (after taking those), kill him with a strafe shot while you're jumping off the right side of the platform (you should already be falling when your fist hits him). You'll land on the six gems below. Take the quickly and then take the matuvu in combo (it should be pretty easy if you were fast enough with the Hoodmonger because you're already facing it). If you took all the gems on the way and converted all convertible lums or got some black lums glitches (I can't remember, though, if you're playing on PC or not, so I don't know if that's an option), the matuvu should be quintupled if I haven't missed anything.

[DTUCC]

I did bring this up because it is at the very heart of the discussions we’re having. It’s about gaming culture and gaming ethics. You blocked access to your forum for “competitive reasons”, which is what it is. But it’s a symptom of a gaming culture you, Cut, MG and CC represent. A culture that I hope will not spread in RPC. You are so hell-bent on improving your positions in HoF that you will use any means in your power to do so, even if it means using dubious, game-changing glitches or other shortcuts.

I sense you are here solely to defend your use of IPG and your sales pitch being it is a pre-existent glitch. Any questions or reservations members might have against this glitch have been met by you calling them narrow-minded and worse. In fact, I don’t sense any respect at all from you, Cut or CC for the members in RPC. And, what’s perhaps worse, you don’t show any respect for the game that has been a big part of our lives.

I'm sorry, but I don't see any reason to react to those suggestions. You can think whatever you like, I never had any bad intentions coming here, holding back combos and the ipg or asking for fairer judging regarding platform related differences.
Calling it a "different gaming culture" when I, MG and Cut are after first place, I won't even go into that. Don't tell me you're not interested in first place. You said for yourself in your 10-year-anniversary post that someone who challenges first place should come up with ideas of his own. That's what we did, and we never felt the intense disgust you seem to feel towards the ipg.

Now, I don't see how you claim I have no respect for the members of this community. Since the start of this debate, I never insulted anyone and I never ignored anyone's messages regarding the discussion whether the ipg should be allowed or not. Speaking of ignoring, Sajiki has made a few very valid points again and again that everyone continuously excludes from this conversation.

You ask for objective reasons for not allowing pre-existent, game-changing glitches to count in HoF? Well, that’s easy. Look above. Another reason is, you don’t get to choose what pre-existent glitches you want to count or not. If they are allowed, then that’s it. That means IPG, MG’s discovery (yes, this will be allowed too) and what else that will follow. Some glitches may accidentally make certain combos possible, others may make things a lot easier for some and others again will perhaps make scoring completely meaningless and some may be platform dependent.

I still don't understand why you keep bringing up the PC cheat. Back in November, you did ask me not to repeat the same things over and over. I get the point, you won't make a difference between the ipg and the PC cheat. Let me actually show you the difference in numbers:

Back when the PC cheat actually came up, you provided a list of theoretical maximum scores that could be achieved via this glitch. I hope you don't mind the quote...

FC: 108.339
CF: 115.579
BOM: 114.499
LOTLD: 119.599
DOTK: 120.239
LS: 120.539
SBTC: 115.019
HH: 116.699
TOTL: 119.679

Total: 1.050.191

viewtopic.php?p=360849#p360849

since you claim that getting the absolute maximum in a level through the PC cheat still requires skill, effort and routing (the main criteria i named for a glitch to still be acceptable, feel free to provide different ones), i'd like to go into more detail about how much skill the PC cheat requires as opposed to the IPG. Here are my calculations:

FC: 108.339 - 100.249 = 8.090
CF: 115.579 - 101.499 = 14.080
BOM: 114.499 - 101.499 = 13.000
LOTLD: 121.599 - 101.499 = 20.100
DOTK: 120.239 - 101.499 = 18.740
LS: 120.539 - 101.499 = 19.040
SBTC: 115.019 - 101.499 = 13.520
HH: 116.699 - 101.499 = 15.200
TOTL: 119.679 - 101.499 = 18.180

Total: 1.051.691 - 912.241 = 139.950 (13.3%)

Now here's what those numbers mean:
Green numbers are the potential maximum scores obtainable through the PC cheat, as taken from your post. I haven't ran any calculations about these myself, but since you have always been pretty accurate when it comes to calculations, I assume they are correct for the most part. LS and TOTL seem a bitt off to me(the Shoe Combo in LS 1 and the big Hoodlum combo in TOTL 1 are higher than those imo) I also changed the calculated maximum for LOTLD as that one has clearly changed by today.
Red numbers represent the amount of points obtainable thorough MGs cheat without having to show the slightest bit of skill and routing, namely 99.999 plus the base amount of a green gem for worlds 2-9 and the base amount of a matuvus or tribelle for world 1. I hope we can all agree that getting to 98.499 through MGs cheat and taking a green gem/matuvus won't require any skill at all.

i used these numbers to calculate how many points are actually achieved by pure skill and furthermore determined how much of the respective total score that is. as you can see, we talk about ~13.3% of the game's total score that would be achieved by skill, while the rest was achieved by a glitch that makes scoring completely redundant and entirely defeats the main factors of skill, effort and routing.

compare this to MandM's score of 858.900, the previously believed almost-maximum and you quickly realise that 100% of that score are achieved by skill.

Let's take the same approach to the ipg. according to the solution on page one, 27.000 points are achieved in part 2 of TOTL. as research a few years ago has shown, this is clearly far away from the maximum. when I researched combos in this part pre-ipb i actually found improvements worth about 8.5k points. some of them i even mentioned years ago, like accessing a lockjaw early to get the lavicrafts for double points. other come from pretty obvious sources like killing the hoodstormers on top of the tower and afterwards falling down to the green gem to get it for 7500 points in combo. since i can't really prove most of this through video footage etc (i don't have any), let's keep it at 27k.

the ipg skyrocketed the total score in part 2 to about 47k points not factoring in lums glitches. add lums glitches to the scenario and generously round up to 50k and we'll see an improvement of 23k points provided by the ipg. compare this to our current high score and the ipg is worth a whopping 2.6 percent of our current total score. and unlike the PC cheat, the majority of those 23k still require a lot of routing, playtesting and they don't allow for essentially unpunished failure. every misstep is still a restart with the ipg.

the main point i'm trying to get here is this:
is it necessary to judge glitches within the community? - yes
do i think it is necessary to prohibit the use of any game breaking glitches and cheat engines, MG's discovery in particular? - absolutely yes!
is the ipg a gamebreaking glitch that needs to be considered banworthy? - hell, no

the PC cheat has absolutely nothing to do with the ipg and in no way are they comparable.

One last thing (not related to the comparison of ipg vs PC cheat): the razoff glitch provides 4.5k extra points per additional hit. get a triple glitch and that's 13.5k points. that's more than half of what the ipg results in, and no one ever doubted the razoff glitch. take the 8.5k in part 2 of TOTL into account and we are talking about glitches of almost the same size. That's how much of an impact the ipg has on the game so far.

[rolesfamily]

How about this: When someone uses a score glitch they have to announce it when they submit their score.

So it'd be like

hey guys I just beat your top score in TLOTLD (for example), BUT I used glitch XYZ

Then that's fair. It's when people don't declare it.

And surely glitches only matter when someone beats a known limit for a level. If someone glitches their way to 500k it doesn't matter.

[sfn42]

The following should be seen as more of an addition to CC's long post. He has explained the issue in much detail and with excellent arguments already. His post shows a more practical side of things (and is, therefore, probably more fun to read), whereas I try to establish more of a theoretical background (it might, thus, be a bit dry at times). If you have time to read only one of the two posts, his is probably the more important one.

Since MandM is so hung-up on the MG-trick, I have taken some time to break down its properties. I have tried to find objective and quantifiable measures for these properties.

Multiplicity: The MG-trick allows you to get the points for one item multiple times (when you are reloading the level, you are getting the points for the same things (e.g. a green gem) again and again. Multiplicity of the MG-trick is theoretically unlimited but it is restricted by the 100000-limit. The x2-bonus for powerups is not an aspect of multiplicity, as multiplicity only applies after the x2-bonus has taken effect.
Platform-dependency: The MG-trick only works on a specific platform (PC).
Exocentricity: The MG-trick is triggered by an action that takes place outside the game itself (shutting-off the game).
Radical Maximum-Time Reduction: The average time a player needs to gain a maximum with the MG-trick is massively reduced compared to the time for a regular maximum (the maxima of course differ in regular and MG-trick-based play). This relates directly to CC's measure of skill-level, but I believe that time is a more quantifiable property than skill. The thought process behind both is pretty much the same, though.

You claim that the MG-trick and the IPG are essentially the same. Let's have a look then, if they share any of these objective, quantifiable properties:
Multiplicity: No. The IPG does not allow multiple scoring for one item.
Platform-dependency: No. The IPG works on all platforms. Although PC players have to use a slightly different technique, this does not affect scoring in any way. In fact, it is very similar to CF part 2 where Xbox players can use the piggy bank jump and players on other platforms have to use the piggy bank launch, because of platform differences in terms of jump height.
Exocentricity: No. The IPG is triggered by an action within the game.
Radical Maximum-Time Reduction: No/Not sufficient data. We would have to compare the time it takes the average player to get the 104499 maximum with no-IPG with the time it takes to get the 116k-maximum with the IPG. We don't have enough data for that, since CC is, as of yet, the only player to get the new maximum. However, based on the playing experiences in an IPG-based game and the scoring development of CC (multiple tries and several weeks to get the maximum), there is no indication that this is a property of the IPG.

As shown above, the MG-trick and the IPG share none of these objective, quantifiable properties.

Let's have a look then at MandM's reasons for treating them the same. Based on his posts, I have extracted four “properties” that he uses to justify this categorization: dubious, game-changing, game-breaking and the local/global distinction. None of these can be considered properties, however, as they are not objective, quantifiable and/or relevant. Let's have a closer look at each of them:
Dubious: Dubious is a categorization based on personal feelings. A person, such as MandM, casts doubt on something, expressing his personal feelings about something. The notion of dubiousness is not quantifiable and it is not objective. It is based on an individual point of view.
Game-changing: This is an interesting notion. “Game-changing” is usually considered neutral, sometimes even positive. Changes to the game might provide new perspectives and enrich it. MandM has used it in a purely negative sense, perceiving change is something bad, something to avoid. This is curious, considering that every single new discovery (glitch, combo, trick) changes the game. With every new discovery, our perception of Rayman 3 has changed. This goes back to 2003, when 500000 total points was considered a milestone. In his usage of the term “game-changing” MandM adds a connotative layer of negativity to it. The notion of change is neutral, though. It just means that something shifts from one state of another. There are methods to quantify change, as it is indeed a neutral and objective notion. Adding connotative layers (in other words: personal feelings) to it, as MandM does, erases the objective and quantifiable status of change per definition of the word 'objective'. Thus, the notion of “game-changing”, as used by MandM, cannot be considered relevant.
If we take the objective notion of change and try to quantify it, we could use the actual point change in the case of Rayman 3, to measure the strength of the change. CC has looked at that and provided numbers for that. These numbers show that the IPG is much closer to other techniques such as the Razoff-glitch or the piggy-bank-launch in CF than it is to the MG-trick. We could invent a cutoff-score for acceptability of strength of change that is set between Razoff-glitch and IPG but that would be arbitrary, as there would be no objective reasons to set it at this specific score. Thus, change cannot be used objectively as a measurement for acceptability and, consequently, falls short of the relevance criterion.
Game-breaking: “Game-breaking” means that a certain scenario/action etc. makes it impossible for us to actually play the game. “Game-breaking” is part of an objective, dualistic notion. Either something breaks a game or it does not. However, it falls short of the relevance criterion again. If a game is broken, it cannot be played, anyway. So glitches that break the game cannot be part of the scoring competition per definitionem. The IPG is not game-breaking. It does not prevent us from playing the game. If it did, CC, Cut and MG couldn't have used it to increase their scores and this discussion would be entirely pointless. Thus, “game-breaking” as an objective concept is not relevant to acceptability of glitches.
The global/local distinction: MandM came up with this distinction early on, describing the IPG as global. It is highly problematic, though. The biggest problem: the definition of global and local. They can be seen within the context of a level/part or within the context of the game as a whole. Within the context of the game as a whole, every glitch that can be repeated in different areas has to be considered global, as it is a property of the general programming (or the mechanics) of the game. Examples for that would be the launching glitch and black lums glitch in Rayman 3. Local glitches relate to the specific programming of one level. At this point, we cannot categorize the IPG because we do not know enough about it (based on our current understanding, it is local, though, since it is tied to a very specific location). Looking at global/local in the context of a level/part creates a paradox that is the consequence of general game structure. For Rayman 3, we have a three-level structure: the game – the 9 levels – the 48 parts. Logically, one cannot apply a global/local distinction to a level or even a part in the way MandM does, because it would exclude the logic of the game as a whole from the levels and parts, thus creating the paradox of something that consists of some levels and parts but is not a game. Rayman 3 is a game, thus we need all three levels of the structure. Therefore, the global/local distinction (applied to the whole structure) is either not relevant to the acceptability of glitches or (applied to the lower levels) cannot work, logically.
We could argue that the IPG influences the logic of a whole part. However, this is not a relevant criterion. The logic of a part consists of every entity in the part and the interaction between the entities. If we change any of them, the logic of the part changes. In other words, if we play any part any differently (interact with the entities in a different way), the logic of the part changes. Thus, every glitch, every combo etc. changes the logic of a part (CC and Sajiki have provided concrete examples, also), thus a changed logic cannot be a relevant criterion.

As I have shown, MandM's “properties” are inadequate, as they are not relevant to the issue, objective and/or quantifiable. Thus, there is absolutely no reason to put the MG-trick and the IPG into the same categories.

[MandM81]

CC: You're right, a few of the maximum scores on the list need adjusting. I can't remember if I factored in the Matuvu in the combo in LS, for instance.

As you know, I'm against the use of MG in the scoring competition. But I must say, it requires considerable skill to reach a maximum score in a few of the levels. I don't think you have the maximum score in each level if you could use the MG glitch? I know I haven't. But is it good for the development of the game? Absolutely not.

As for the IPG, I do admit it's great to be able to play some combos one hasn't been able to play before. That being said, when I played TOTL part 2 with the IPG it simply felt wrong. It's not right one is able to leave the gaming area and visit rooms and areas freely. And the prospect of improving the scores by probing for glitches is not something I will pursue in any way. I feel we lose something valuable when it's reduced to a glitch hunt. Is it good for the development of the game? Absolutely not.

You did a great job in TOFL part 2 though. I do respect that.

The question is, should we allow pre-existent glitches to count in HoF? Sfn made the case: IPG should be allowed because it is pre-existent. If we allow a glitch to count because it is pre-existent, then all pre-existent glitches should obviously count. If we don't allow MG to count, then not all pre-existent glitches should count. And thus, IPG should not necessarily count on the grounds of pre-existence. There is very good reason for mentioning MG in connection with IPG. They are both pre-existent, you approve of one but not the other.

[MandM81]

Don't tell me you're not interested in first place. You said for yourself in your 10-year-anniversary post that someone who challenges first place should come up with ideas of his own. That's what we did, and we never felt the intense disgust you seem to feel towards the ipg.

I missed this part. Well, obviously I was going for the top spot. And I got there without performance enhancing glitches.

But seriously, didn't you have any second thoughts at all about using such a glitch in the competition?

[Sajiki]

nevermind whatever

[Adsolution]

I missed this before, but I want to comment on it:

New rules for the HOF also seems like a reasonable idea. I await MandM's suggestions... perhaps entry validation?

I think this is something good to have in place completely outside the realms of the current discussion, as with there only being fewer than three hundred submissions to the HoF over the course of its lifetime, it wouldn't be a remote burden, and it would allow us to pick out potential cheats before they appear in the HoF.

In addition, if there were new glitch-exception/glitches-used rules to be made, this could also help, but I don't know how it would be possible for us to identify the usage of glitches without them either telling us or providing a whole video of their playthrough.


I also think that the HoF is a little too hidden, and it would perhaps be cool to have a readout of the latest five submissions displayed on the front page (username/score/platform) in a widget of some kind, and in it another link to the Hall of Fame.

[rolesfamily]

I agree that the HOF is too hidden. The only way I find it easily is through the thread 'All you need to know about the pirate community'.

- And on a score note, I've been currently improving my score. I've got about 3 more levels to revisit then I'll of hit my personal max.

[Adsolution]

It for some reason took me a while to remember it was located under Rayman 3 on the portal (I kept trying to find it in Affiliates for some reason during my first year here), which is unfortunately the furthest game down on the list and quite easy to miss.

What's your personal max roles?

[rolesfamily]

It for some reason took me a while to remember it was located under Rayman 3 on the portal (I kept trying to find it in Affiliates for some reason during my first year here), which is unfortunately the furthest game down on the list and quite easy to miss.

What's your personal max roles?

It's gonna be in the 300ks somewhere, I've got a few more good runs to get. I'm at 310k right now, but I think I can score at least another 20k on that if not a bit more. So watch this space! I know i's not much compared to some of you pros, but I'm pretty happy to be in the 300ks.

[Adsolution]

Well, keep it up!

Actually now that I think about it, I feel better about my 620k score I got in 2004/2005 (I can't remember, might have been the end of '04), given the hypothesised theoretical maximum at the time. If only I'd been a little older, I probably would have loved to have been a part of this German group of discovery; I'm even German myself, hehe.

[RibShark]

I'm still interested how IPG is done on the PC version. I wouldn't use it for scoring (and if I ever did I would say), but maybe for speedrunning, or maybe just for fun. If it isn't a secret, could someone tell me how it is done?

[Cut]

http://youtu.be/GxVkLy88Eg4

[RibShark]

Thanks

[Cut]

Feel free to ask me anything about the IPG. It's too complex to explain this perfectly in one short video (especially the technical backround of this glitch), and there are many annoying little things which can be success-killers. Best way is try on your own and get experienced with it

[RibShark]

How did you already have the lockjaw power before defeating the lavicrafts?

EDIT: Rolling superjump?

[Cut]

http://youtu.be/lxNj4uITx3Y

[RibShark]

Ahh just guessed it as you posted. Thanks for all the help.

[Cut]

No problem dude. Share this link with the speedrun-community, they have waited way too long for this!