[High Score Challenge 03] Glypha: Vintage, Glypha III v1.0.1 and Tetris (Spectrum Holobytes)

Mu0n

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Congratulations @Seirea and welcome to the forum. I didn't expect twitch streamers coming in these threads so early in their series incarnation but here we are, WOO!

It's interesting that you picked that my playstyle was solely to joust at the top and pray, I tend to AVOID THAT AT ALL COSTS in my gameplan and only use it as a last resort, it's not reliable enough for my taste. Maybe I use it more often as a last resort than I realize.

One thing I've slowly developped recently is to relax and corral these baddies by flying more slowly away. Trying to rush your escape gives you a false sense of short term security. Yes, you're running from immediate danger in the moment, but you're rushing into your warp on the other side and into the next danger zone. If you fly at near their speed, you can make them waste more time flying towards you before you pop out at maximum distance on the other side. Try that out sometime, it helped me a lot.

I also abuse the lowest level more and more recently. My broad strategy is that higher ground is good, so corral towards bottom if you don't have it, then get back high ground, abuse ledges (like I've seen you do).

I might try to beat my score near the end of the month's time but right now, my work is tying me up really good. I suspect you can really up your score (dare we say a million points???) if you depend less on getting the high ground by twitch jousting and more on slow methodical corraling by matching their speed and not rushing.

edit - you probably picked it up (didn't watch every second of your stream) but you can kill the eye by bumping into it when its lid closes, it happens every 15 s (or whatever it is) at regular intervals
 
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Seirea

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Thank you so much @Mu0n !

Regarding my statements about your playstyle; I think I just had it dead wrong. I was skipping flippantly between several moments in your post-Level 15 play, and those simply happened to involve you resorting to the top. Like much of what I was saying in the early goings, I had it in my head inaccurately, and was painting an emotional picture of the game that I'm very embarrassed of now.

Most of my crucial survival moments involved leading the enemies around meticulously, like you say! It flowed more naturally when I was in pure disbelief. Unfortunately at the end, I became too antsy, pressed too hard, and forgot to try anything other than shooting to the top. I will be sure to keep this in mind more when I do more attempts!

Oh wow!! I hadn't made that connection with the eye! I did manage to kill the eye twice by pure accident. I'll have to see if I can start getting a better read on its cycle.

My current goal is Level 100, then maybe 500,000? Then maybe one million...? We'll see how things go!

Thank you very much for the kindness and tips! Best of luck at work, and in any attempts you're able to get to.
 
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Seirea

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...sorry, you inspired me

5/26/23 High Score (Livestream VoD)

1122200.png


I had several dozens of (maybe even close to one hundred) extra lives in reserve; I called uncle at 1,100,000 points. I let the lives dwindle by avoiding points while still progressing through levels, via showcasing an exploit I used to protect lives in the long run when still going for kills: leading groups of enemies into the quicksand! I was able to effectively do that thanks to your advice, Mu0n! They all depleted on level 543.
 
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Mu0n

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That's amazing! Not just doing that score but you learning so quickly to the point where you made the difficulty trivial. We'll have to let John Calhoun know either on twitter or in the Steam discussion in the community hub of his game so that he can patch it eventually to avoid it.

He mentioned he could bump up the number of simultaneous enemies way higher without any performance loss, but I wonder if even that would do the trick. Maybe program a new ultra enemy or something. He has to, otherwise this game is practically solved. And as you'vre discovered (nicely done btw), prevent that quicksand exploit - enemies stop flapping IF they're close enough to you AND IF you stop flapping and let yourself soar down, but it should have an exception if you're low enough in y coordinate.
 
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Seirea

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Yeah after that I don’t think I should even bother trying in glypha vintage… will get glypha 3 onto my PowerBooks later though. Haven’t gotten around to it yet.
Yeah sorry...after I failed getting to Level 100 two nights ago, I only thought I'd be trying to get that, but then once I found myself at 500K I realized this was probably the only time I'd have the gall to keep going.
That's amazing! Not just doing that score but you learning so quickly to the point where you made the difficulty trivial. We'll have to let John Calhoun know either on twitter or in the Steam discussion in the community hub of his game so that he can patch it eventually to avoid it.

He mentioned he could bump up the number of simultaneous enemies way higher without any performance loss, but I wonder if even that would do the trick. Maybe program a new ultra enemy or something. He has to, otherwise this game is practically solved. And as you'vre discovered (nicely done btw), prevent that quicksand exploit - enemies stop flapping IF they're close enough to you AND IF you stop flapping and let yourself soar down, but it should have an exception if you're low enough in y coordinate.
All interesting ideas! I also wonder about make extra lives come in at half of the rate they do now. The difficulty feels -fairly- close to solid as it is; I still can die 20 times in any level. Maybe without the quicksand exploit, and with less constant lives rolling in, it'll be about right.
 

3lectr1c

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Oh that’s so strange… I just opened Tetris on my 3400c to take a picture of my second score submission of 10,000-something and it’s gone! Reset not blank for some reason but to the scores that were already there from whoever Sean is from whoever uploaded it to macintoshgarden… that is so weird, and frustrating.
 
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retr01

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On a side note, turns out that there is a desk accessory (DA) Tetris app. :)

1685242303418.png


To bring that up, you will need to get the Tetris floppy disk. Then, drag the DA out of the suitcase somewhere else like desktop. Then double click on that Tetris DA app.
 
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3lectr1c

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Wish I'd been able to submit a higher score for Tetris and one for the other games, just unfortunately been very busy over the last month or so with all sorts of stuff. Doesn't help my 10,000 something highscore got erased. I still want to check out Glypha thanks to this though at some point and I hope you'll continue doing these, even if not too many people contribute scores. It's a lot of fun and a great way to get into new vintage games!