TCB33: Assault Course Nr 1

Quote from: DarkOne on January 31, 2013, 08:45 AM
At any rate, I changed the rules a bit so people wouldn't use dragon/firepunch and move in retreat time all the time That was common practice back in the day, and it kind of made checking the replays more annoying.

Please explain how this makes any sense at all... you seem to be already counting retreat time in the turn time total (though it'd really help if you made that completely unambiguous in the challenge's description; TCB was plagued with ambiguous descriptions in many of its challenges, and I would have hoped that would be a thing of the past). The retreat time is already 3 seconds in this challenge's scheme, so 3 seconds are already being added for every turn. As a result, there would be no advantage from doing all movement during retreat time. So why do you use this as your reason for adding an extra 3 second per turn penalty? And why don't you make it clear that this results in 6 seconds being added per turn (3 second retreat + 3 second penalty, except for turns in which you lost control during the retreat)? This is a recipe for misinterpretation.

Also... if "using dragon/firepunch and moving in retreat time all the time" was "a common practice back in the day", that would only have been because many people (including me) misinterpreted those TCB challenge descriptions. I used that technique on Challenge #50, another assault coarse by Mr T Penguin, and then was very upset to see that retreat time actually was counted towards the scoring of my submitted replay... I had wasted time doing a badly-scoring run because I thought, from reading the description, that retreat time didn't count. (The description only said "Less turn time used for challenge completion ranks higher." It seemed pretty clear to me that meant retreat time wasn't included, but then it did turn out to be included.)

Do the listed records (ranging from 132.18s to 473.54s) use the "turn time + retreat time + 3 sec per turn penalty" formula?

i must agree with deadcode.

In short, I count all the turn time used and add 3 seconds for each completed turn before the actual finish. 3 seconds because the retreat time is 3 seconds.
If someone loses control during his/her turn during the regular turn time, then the 3 seconds is a penalty. If someone messes up during retreat time, it means they get a smaller penalty (cause they used up some of those 3 seconds).

Sorry for the misunderstanding!

Quote from: DarkOne on February 06, 2013, 04:28 PM
In short, I count all the turn time used and add 3 seconds for each completed turn before the actual finish. 3 seconds because the retreat time is 3 seconds.
If someone loses control during his/her turn during the regular turn time, then the 3 seconds is a penalty. If someone messes up during retreat time, it means they get a smaller penalty (cause they used up some of those 3 seconds).

Sorry for the misunderstanding!

Arrrrgh. You still haven't cleared it up with 100% unambiguity. Since you used to use "turn time" on TCB to mean "turn time + retreat time", please just say it straight out:

Do you count turn time + retreat time + 3 sec penalty per turn (in which case the 3 sec would be added twice per turn in most cases),

Or, do you count turn time, not including retreat time, and then add the 3 sec penalty per turn? (I think it's this one, but I really wish you'd say so unambiguously.)

EDIT: It's very clear now that retreat time isn't counted, and the 3 second penalty per turn is added instead. But that's only because Statik posted an Export Log excerpt that agrees with his posted time, and his posted time is not shown as "Waiting to be approved".

The challenge description really needs to be edited to clear this up, so that other players won't need to use detective work to figure out your meaning. The description as it is right now is flat-out wrong.

QuoteI will count the amount of time you spent playing and I will add 3 seconds for every turn you used.

Retreat time is time spent playing. So this description makes it sound like the 3 seconds are added twice for each turn which had a complete retreat.

Quote from: DarkOne on February 06, 2013, 04:28 PMIf someone loses control during his/her turn during the regular turn time, then the 3 seconds is a penalty.

But if I understand you correctly, then the 3 seconds would also be a penalty if they lose control during a retreat.

After the barman's example with game log everything is clear: Turn: 00:01:57.18, Retreat: 00:00:15.00, Total: 00:02:12.18

So DarkOne doesn't add additional 3xTurns seconds to a total time. But I wonder why he didn't just set retreat to 0

Quote from: Statik on February 06, 2013, 08:07 PM
After the barman's example with game log everything is clear: Turn: 00:01:57.18, Retreat: 00:00:15.00, Total: 00:02:12.18

But that's incorrect. Sure, it so happens that in barman's example, every turn had a full retreat, but if that hadn't been the case, then this would give the wrong answer. Therefore it's pretty misleading. (Never mind that in all the best runs, as far as we know, retreat time will be fully used, rendering this distinction moot...)

BTW, amazing run time, Statik. I still don't know how you did it... I just got 131.66 seconds tool-assisted. You must be using a much quicker strategy than what I've arrived at, because it'd be impossible to get that close to a TA run in this kind of challenge using the same strategy...

Thanks, maybe DarkOne will open replays sooner, because the recent activity there is very low :<

I wanna do another run if I get time! I discovered a little bit faster way.

Quote from: Deadcode on February 06, 2013, 08:02 PM
Arrrrgh. You still haven't cleared it up with 100% unambiguity. Since you used to use "turn time" on TCB to mean "turn time + retreat time", please just say it straight.

I thought my description was quite unambiguous in my post, since turn time is used the same way everywhere. After all, when I ask you to describe for example hysteria, don't you say you get 1 second turn time and 5 seconds retreat time? It's also the term used in logs, so I figured you'd appreciate it if I used that terminology  I'll change the challenge description to match my post.

What makes you think I remember the exact wording on TCB when I don't even remember the rules for a lot of challenges?

I don't like having to explain every minute detail about a challenge because there will always be something left to comment on and it would require an extraordinary amount of text to een attemp to remove all doubt - which leads to people not reading the wall of text.

Prank, you've still got time

Quote from: DarkOne on February 06, 2013, 11:17 PM
I thought my description was quite unambiguous in my post, since turn time is used the same way everywhere.

Well, problem is, you said "amount of time you spent playing", not turn time. But you've edited it now, thank you!

Also I see something in that scoring method I wouldn't have known otherwise, until you edited it just now: That you don't add a 3 second penalty for the last turn if the retreat was not used. That means some of my submitted runs will score better than I thought. Corrections:
My 177.22s run is actually 174.22s
My 182.96s run is actually 179.96s

Quote from: DarkOne on February 06, 2013, 11:17 PMAfter all, when I ask you to describe for example hysteria, don't you say you get 1 second turn time and 5 seconds retreat time? It's also the term used in logs, so I figured you'd appreciate it if I used that terminology 

Perfect, thank you. As long as I know that you're using "turn time" in that sense, I'm fine with it The reason I wasn't sure is that in TCB you used to use the term differently. Now we can finally put that behind us.

Quote from: DarkOne on February 06, 2013, 11:17 PMWhat makes you think I remember the exact wording on TCB when I don't even remember the rules for a lot of challenges?

I didn't know you didn't still have the archive of TCB descriptions, maps, and schemes. I assumed you had it, because where else would you be getting the maps? And you got the scoring method for TCB challenge #22 exactly how it was on TCB, so naturally I just assumed you had all the old descriptions. If you didn't... well, great memory!

Quote from: DarkOne on February 06, 2013, 11:17 PMI don't like having to explain every minute detail about a challenge because there will always be something left to comment on and it would require an extraordinary amount of text to een attemp to remove all doubt - which leads to people not reading the wall of text.

Being precise doesn't necessarily mean being very wordy!

I volunteer to be a challenge description editor. The way I envision it is this: MonkeyIsland sets up something where I get auto-emailed whenever a new challenge is posted. If I see ambiguity in the wording, I ask the author to clear it up, then I edit the description, keeping it concise and as brief as possible while eliminating the ambiguity.

Having linkified text would help a lot. A term that might potentially be seen as ambiguous could be underlined, and clicking it would bring up a little text box clarifying it. For example: "No skipwalking allowed." Clicking it would bring up a definition, which includes both skipwalking and flipwalking (in case somebody thinks they skirt around this rule by doing flipwalking instead of skipwalking).

I agree that i'd love to see statik replay ! such great challenges !
btw DC it is not said in the rule but no Tool Assist attempt, so remove your 157.9s. I don't believe you did it without a bit of cheating. Afterall, you're known to be the biggest cheater worms ever had ! 
Joking man, nice to see you doing some tus

Quote from: zippeurfou on February 07, 2013, 03:06 AM
I agree that i'd love to see statik replay ! such great challenges !
btw DC it is not said in the rule but no Tool Assist attempt, so remove your 157.9s. I don't believe you did it without a bit of cheating. Afterall, you're known to be the biggest cheater worms ever had ! 

Hahaha. You almost had me there... I was about to reply "No! That's an unaided attempt, not tool-assisted at all."

Quote from: zippeurfou on February 07, 2013, 03:06 AM
Joking man, nice to see you doing some tus

Thanks zippeurfou

My best tool-assisted attempt is 121.06 s now, BTW. I still think Statik and _ssm_ must've found a better shortcut than what I'm aware of so far. My 153.00 s attempt uses the same basic strategy as the TA reply but without the fancier jumps that are hard to do quickly... I made no mistakes in that run... can't imagine that it could be trimmed down much further without changing the path taken. Or doing many hundreds of attempts while taking greater risks.

Deadcode, i already done ~700 attempts

aw you are close, I have to improve now :<

at last I did it without mistakes