Speccy Tour 2010 Rules

***  10th International ZX Spectrum games Tournament  ***

What's this all about?

The Speccy Tour 2010 is a games playing tournament that will run for 10 weeks, giving you the time to improve your scores in the games that take part in the tournament. This means that you don't have to rush your scores. There's plenty of time to make a good score.

Start Date: October 11th, 2010.
Ending Date: December 19th, 2010 23:59 London time - 15:59 Pacific Standard time (HARP Time).

Ending date to sign up is November 11th, 2010.

Rules:

Every player must submit a score for all 10 games to qualify for the final Leaderboard. Players who don't submit a score for all 10 games are disqualified. You can send as many recordings to a game as you wish, as long as they are higher than your previous score. For a complete list of Special Rules on each game, visit the Special Rules page. Here you can also download some instructions for the 10 picked games as soon as the games in this years Tour are announched.

The scores are automatically registered in the server, so they can be submited anytime. However don't submit *lots* of scores in order to keep low the quota in the server.

The last 2 weeks are on 'special regime', as we need to avoid 'score hoarding'. During that time, when recording starts, players have to type 'public key' for that week, and send records within 48 hours.

Point System:

New leaderboard system is based on old classic system (% of max score), called Deca, and the F1 system that we have used for the past 2 years. We think this new system is more fair in some situations, so players will be less frustrated and discouraged. First of all, let's see the new formula:

Score will be: Deca score / 2 + F1 score.

Let's remember the F1 score system:

1st - 50 pts.
2nd - 42 pts.
3rd - 36 pts.
4th - 31 pts.
5th - 27 pts.
6th - 24 pts.
7th - 21 pts.
8th - 19 pts.
9th - 17 pts.
10th - 16 pts.
11th - 15 pts.
and so on, so 25th (and any lower score) in an game will get 1 point.

Why is this new system more fair? Well, there are two situations where players may get frustrated with scores:

With Deca system, we've had situations where a player got a whole lot more points than the rest of the players in a game, resulting in these Leaderboard scores: 100%, 10%, 3%, 2%, 1%...

Examples: ST2001 with Chuckie Egg, ST2004 with PiR2 and Super Scramble Simulator, ST2005 with Bounder, etc.

Let's see what happened with Bounder in ST2005:

Bounder scores: 1st - 10.684.360, 2nd - 5.117.680, 3rd - 359.760
Deca: 1st: 100%, 2nd: 47,899%, 3rd: 3,367%
F1: 1st: 50, 2nd: 42, 3rd: 36
New: 1st: 100, 2nd: 65,95, 3rd: 37,68

Had we used this new system back in the ST2005, the second placed player and the rest would have been favoured, making it more fair, and not so hopeless for the weaker players.

Saturation scores: This situation happens where players in top positions of a game have almost the same score, as with Pyramid in ST2005:

Pyramid scores: 1st - 136373, 2nd - 134939, 3rd - 134741
Deca: 1st: 100%, 2nd: 98,948%, 3rd: 98,818%
F1: 1st: 50, 2nd: 42, 3rd: 36
New: 1st: 100, 2nd: 91,5, 3rd: 85,4

In this case first player gets more recognition with the new Leaderboard system.

If two or more players have the same amount of final leaderboard points, its the player with most 1st places that will win the tour. If they also have the same number of first places, its then the player with most 2nd places that wins, and so on.

What do I need to take part?

Following Emulators can be used in the Speccy Tour 2010:

Jonathan Needle's Spectaculator for Windows. It uses RZX files. You can either use the Freeware 5.3 version, or use Shareware version 6.3 or higher. For more information on Spectaculator go HERE.

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RealSpectrum DOS version. It uses AIR files. Ideal if you have a slow Pentium or don't like to manage with large recording files.

WolfMess 0.139 for Windows or DOS.

Which is available at: http://wolfmess.homeactionreplay.org.

You also need the Spectrum 48K Bios Rom, and the Spectrum 128K Bios Rom.

Put the Rom and the Games in the right directories like this:
WolfMess\roms\spectrum    (48K Games)
WolfMess\roms\spec128    (128K Games)
WolfMess\software\spectrum    (48K Games)
WolfMess\software\spectrum    (128K Games)

Now WolfMess should find it all by itself, and you are ready to go, after checking out the part on how to record and playback.

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GPL Fuse V0.10.0.2. For Linux and MAC OS X platforms. It handles the RZX format. Download 0.10.2.0 here.

We are pretty busy preparing the compo itself, so please read carefully the docs of each emulator in order on how to execute/compile it. For help on how to record and playback games go here. If you still have doubts, ask for help in your favourite forum WOS/CSS/ECSS. If you are really new at the Speccy emulation scene, and don't know of these forums, then send a mail to Eduardo Yáñez Parareda (Spanish Players) or to Alexandar Lukic (Everyone else), and we'll try to help the best we can :)

What do I do with my recordings?

1. Choose SUBMIT in the header on top of every page here at HARP.
2. Choose Speccy Tour 2010 under Tournament, and up comes the submit page.
3. Choose the Emulator you used, and the game for which the recording is for.
4. Put in your score. In games where level completed counts instead of the score, you must enter the last level you completed in the Stages field. This means if you get to Level 28, you must enter 27, as that was the last level you managed to complete.
5. Find the recording that you want to upload on your harddisk. You don't have to ZIP the file before uploading, as AIR files are so small, and RZX files are hardly compress at all. Just upload them as they are.
6. In the comment box you can either tell the editors something important about your recording, or tease the other players by achieving the new topscore in that game :)
7. Finally choose Submit recording.

IMPORTANT: Always keep a backup of your recordings, old and new scores. Tour's judges will do their best to verify player's scores ASAP, but... the whole thing is volunteer and 'real life' is... 

I still have one or more questions, what do I do?

Simply contact one of the Tour Editors already mentioned above in the 'What do I need to take part' section, or you can seek help in the ZX Spectrum - Speccy Tour 2010 area on the HARP Board, by clicking the Board link at the top of this page. On that Board you can also talk about the games, or what ever you feel like talking about with the other Speccy Tour competitors.

THANK YOU TO:

Michael Bruhn the founder of Speccy Tour, who started the whole thing.

Aley Keprt for making and creating the AIR feature, and for letting Ramsoft use it in Real Spectrum.

Luca Bisti & Stefano Donati (Ramsoft) for making RealSpectrum as suitable for the Tour as possible, and for being so friendly and helpful during this.  

All RZX developers, which have worked hard to give alternatives to participate in the Speccy Tour.

Jonathan Needle and Phillip Kendall for providing us with new emulators for the Speccy Tour.

Pete Fifield 'Gameboy9' for all his hard work on adjusting and programing stuff, so that the Speccy Tour here at HARP can be as enjoyable, and good as possible. Also thank you for hosting the Speccy Tour of course.

Barry Rodewald (mahlemiut) and Chad Hurwitz (Skito) for their HUGE work and help on/with WolfMess.

Kevin Phair for giving permission to link to his great Jonathan 'Joffa' Smith tribute page.

Sergio Baldoví (tinkle) for making the step by step explanation on how to Record/Playback using Fuse.