Bill Carlton, Missile Command, Tattoos?

Dokert

Well-known member
Joined
Jun 3, 2007
Messages
12,751
Reaction score
141
Location
Arlington, Washington
So I am sitting at the Tattoo Parlor while the wife gets her new birthday ink, and the unoccupied tattoo artist starts talking about this guy going for the world record on Missile Command.

So, I said "you mean Bill Carlton?" He says, "Skinny red headed guy?" I busted out my camera and showed him a pic of Bill playing Missile Command over Easter weekend and the dude freaked out. "That's the dude!" "No way!" "You know that guy?"

It was a rather interesting 4 1/2 hours after that, needless to say.

Bill Carlton playing Missile Command prior to the game reset on Easter weekend down a Ken House's place in Hillsboro, Oregon. (Sante on the left, Bill in the middle, Athometech on the right)

100_5081.jpg

My Wife's new birthday ink

100_5097.jpg
 
So I am sitting at the Tattoo Parlor while the wife gets her new birthday ink, and the unoccupied tattoo artist starts talking about this guy going for the world record on Missile Command.

So, I said "you mean Bill Carlton?" He says, "Skinny red headed guy?" I busted out my camera and showed him a pic of Bill playing Missile Command over Easter weekend and the dude freaked out. "That's the dude!" "No way!" "You know that guy?"

It was a rather interesting 4 1/2 hours after that, needless to say.

Bill Carlton playing Missile Command prior to the game reset on Easter weekend down a Ken House's place in Hillsboro, Oregon. (Sante on the left, Bill in the middle, Athometech on the right)

View attachment 31503

My Wife's new birthday ink

View attachment 31504


Cool Tattoo looks like they do nice work!!
 
on that High Score documentary thing, he was having the issue with the Missle Command rebooting. Then it shows him ordering a new PCB, but they never show what happened. Maybe it got delivered later on, I dunno.

Is his machine working now?
 
on that High Score documentary thing, he was having the issue with the Missle Command rebooting. Then it shows him ordering a new PCB, but they never show what happened. Maybe it got delivered later on, I dunno.

Is his machine working now?

After the board problems in the movie were addressed Bill was still suffering resets but they weren't happening until much later in the game. Ultimately the problem turned out to be bugs and quirks in the Missile Command code.

There was a thread on the Twin Galaxies forums a couple of years ago where Bill explained the secret to marathoning the game (Bill is 'Sk8god' on the TG forums) and the discussion later evolved into some code analysis. It comes down to never having more than 255 cities in storage. (Actually, as it turns out it's more complicated than that; you can't have 256 cities +/- 3 at the completion of a board.)

Here's where it gets complicated. On the game's default (marathon) settings you are awarded a bonus city every 10,000 points. At 810,000 points you are awarded 176 bonus cities unless you already have too many cities in storage, in which case you will be awarded none. Then you are awarded no more bonus cities at all between 810,000 points and the 1,000,000 point rollover. When you reach the 0x ("zero times") boards, which are board numbers 255 and 256, every action that results in points awarded is multiplied by 256. This means you get an unbelievable amount of points on these boards. The problem with that, of course, is that you still get a bonus city every 10,000 points if you are not in the range between 810,000 and 1,000,000, so you again have to be mindful of your city count before reaching the 0x boards. Score rollovers happen at 1,000,000, so the next time your score reaches 810,000 again you will again be awarded 176 bonus cities unless you already have too many in which case you will get none, so you again need to run down your city count before hitting 810,000. As your marathon game progresses you have to worry about these two events eventually converging (810,000 and the 0x boards), so you need to keep accurate track of how many bonus cities you have at any given time, and know when to let the game kill off the majority of them before you can proceed past these various checkpoints. A good strategy is to let the game kill off your extra cities as you approach 800,000 until a wave starts where you see fewer than six cities on the screen. At that point you know exactly how many cities you have. Once you pass 810,000 you will be awarded another 176 that will help carry you until the million point rollover and you start earning bonus cities every 10,000 points again. The key is not to let the city count reach 256 +/- 3.

I hope I got all of the details correct and I think I did. Bill's problem now is not that the hardware is unreliable or that the game is still randomly resetting. He has to get more disciplined about keeping accurate track of his cities and taking breaks at the right times.

[Edit: corrected number of bonus cities awarded at 810K from 147 to 176.]
 
Last edited:
After the board problems in the movie were addressed Bill was still suffering resets but they weren't happening until much later in the game. Ultimately the problem turned out to be bugs and quirks in the Missile Command code.

There was a thread on the Twin Galaxies forums a couple of years ago where Bill explained the secret to marathoning the game (Bill is 'Sk8god' on the TG forums) and the discussion later evolved into some code analysis. It comes down to never having more than 255 cities in storage. (Actually, as it turns out it's more complicated than that; you can't have 256 cities +/- 3 at the completion of a board.)

Here's where it gets complicated. On the game's default (marathon) settings you are awarded a bonus city every 10,000 points. At 810,000 points you are awarded 147 bonus cities unless you already have too many cities in storage, in which case you will be awarded none. Then you are awarded no more bonus cities at all between 810,000 points and the 1,000,000 point rollover. When you reach the 0x ("zero times") boards, which are board numbers 255 and 256, every action that results in points awarded is multiplied by 256. This means you get an unbelievable amount of points on these boards. The problem with that, of course, is that you still get a bonus city every 10,000 points if you are not in the range between 810,000 and 1,000,000, so you again have to be mindful of your city count before reaching the 0x boards. Score rollovers happen at 1,000,000, so the next time your score reaches 810,000 again you will again be awarded 147 bonus cities unless you already have too many in which case you will get none, so you again need to run down your city count before hitting 810,000. As your marathon game progresses you have to worry about these two events eventually converging (810,000 and the 0x boards), so you need to keep accurate track of how many bonus cities you have at any given time, and know when to let the game kill off the majority of them before you can proceed past these various checkpoints. A good strategy is to let the game kill off your extra cities as you approach 800,000 until a wave starts where you see fewer than six cities on the screen. At that point you know exactly how many cities you have. Once you pass 810,000 you will be awarded another 147 that will help carry you until the million point rollover and you start earning bonus cities every 10,000 points again. The key is not to let the city count reach 256 +/- 3.

I hope I got all of the details correct and I think I did. Bill's problem now is not that the hardware is unreliable or that the game is still randomly resetting. He has to get more disciplined about keeping accurate track of his cities and taking breaks at the right times.



Thank you for this insight. I just watched the documentary the other day and was wondering what became of it.

All I saw on TG was the 45,mil mark with his name back in '08. So I wasn't sure if he just gave up or not. Nice to see he is still going. Old Roy will have a sh*tfit if he goes to number 3. He's doesn't like being in 2nd as it is. lol.

Thanks!


;
 
From watching Roy at the Seattle show, I don't think he could marathon play for 2 days... he didn't seem like the healthiest guy to be playing for 48 hours straight. I did see him get scores in the 400K range and then walk away from the game at least twice.
 
From watching Roy at the Seattle show, I don't think he could marathon play for 2 days... he didn't seem like the healthiest guy to be playing for 48 hours straight. I did see him get scores in the 400K range and then walk away from the game at least twice.

Like he quit and the game was still going?
 
That's a cool story and a nice tattoo Dave. You did tell the guy about High Score the movie right? Or is that how he knew of Bill?

Thanks for breaking down the math SanTe, that's as accurate of a description as I think anyone will ever see on the problems of marathoning MC.
 
That's a cool story and a nice tattoo Dave. You did tell the guy about High Score the movie right? Or is that how he knew of Bill?

Thanks for breaking down the math SanTe, that's as accurate of a description as I think anyone will ever see on the problems of marathoning MC.

The High Score movie is what he had come across on the net.
 
The High Score movie is what he had come across on the net.

Cool I heard it is available on Hulu now.

BTW Dokert, your avatar has inspired me a bit, it was pretty nice when meeting you, SanTe, and Freebeer to instantly know which one you were. If I can find a suitable pic I may use it. For now its Mappy...
 
Last edited:
From watching Roy at the Seattle show, I don't think he could marathon play for 2 days... he didn't seem like the healthiest guy to be playing for 48 hours straight. I did see him get scores in the 400K range and then walk away from the game at least twice.
400k isn't much of a score, even on TGTS. Takes about 20 minutes, so yeah, if he's walking away on 400k I reckon he'd struggle with a marathon session ...
 
Sounds like an interesting four hours and a half indeed. Nice tattoo as well!
 
Warning: Spoilers for the "High Score" documentary below.

Just got done watching High Score on Hulu and as much of a die hard arcade game fanatic as I am, Missile Command was never my game and I never thought a movie about a guy going for its record would be worth watching, but damn that was interesting! I might buy the DVD now, I just wish it showed him beating the record, I felt really bad for him at the end.

Dumb question but remember I never really played MC: Can you stockpile extra cities as you go or can you only have a maximum of the six cities shown on the screen at one time? I ask this because I was wondering how Carlton could take bathroom breaks while playing for days at a time, which would make more sense if he could walk away for a few minutes and just let excess cities burn off.
 
You can have 255 cities without rolling back over to zero, but you have to manually keep track of the city count, and that's the problem for Bill right now. On some screens you can rack up cities quickly and it becomes difficult to keep perfect track of your city count. Lose track of your city count and you can suddenly find the game resetting due to rollover. That's the only thing stopping Bill from taking the record at this point. So yes, that's why he can take bathroom breaks.
 
Back
Top Bottom