ST2003 FAQQ1: What violations can make my recording invalid? A1: In AIR files we have situation very clear. Unlike in 'MAME Tours' where players can 'cheat' in speed (everything under 90% fps is cheating!!) here recording stops if speed falls. Using 'pause' is also forbidden, but 'compo mode' prevents player from this too :-) 'Hoarding Scores' means you made an great score, but you don't submit it to Tour's jury (whitin 48hrs in MAME) on time. This ruins 'fair play' because other competitors deserve to know how good score you have ASAP. Q2: Can I use pause command if it exist in an tour's game? A2: Only once (...phone rings :-) eventually twice ('nature calls'), but don't make pause longer then 15 minutes. You can't go to lunch, bed... and then continue recording. Also you can't 'chop' games with pauses (e.g. fast games like "Space Harrier"). Q3: Hey, I'm a linux user, can I eventually join Speccy Tour? A3: Yes, you can use FUSE in order to join Speccy Tour! See the rules section Q4: Why all this features like Compo modes, RZX digital signing etc? A4: Because we want to play in the same conditions as we were playing on a real Speccy. That is to say, 100% Speed and not slower/faster, being able to pause the game only if the game allows it (not artificially) etc. RZX signing bridges the gap of having a faithfull recording under an emulator of open source code. It prevents from cheating by changing up a few lines in the code and provides a reasonable security. We do really hope that no body would use this sad tactics anyway :). Playing conditions are important though, specially if we want to have an official and faithfull scores chart. Q5: Wouldn't it be much simpler if you just relied on players' good will rather than using recordings with compo mode? A5: Well, we don't think any Specchum would care about losing time trying to defeat RZX signing in order to make good scores. But in the other hand if you provided a player too many emulator facilities like being able to save snapshots and send snapshots as proof of the score, it's very likely that after 2 months of competition he won't feel like going through the easy levels of the game again and will eventually use this facilities. It's not quite the same playing manic miner for 4 hours or resuming the game after a good rest, so all this facts, made us think that we really need those features in order to have a fair compo. We might have some games of the first Speccy Tour (when no game recording was supported and snapshots were used) this year if they are selected, it would be a good chance to contrast how all this things have influence in the final scores, or to see if we are real security paranoids :) |