Robotron Frustration

Kegger

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Sorry I have to vent as I finally hit 695K and this would be my high as opposed to the usual 350k ish but having the game on free play and accidentally hitting player one start right after I was killed I never got a chance to register my initials and I hit it so quick the high score never got a chance to even post in the scores list. I know that score isn't much compared to a whole lot of other people, but it's all I got for now.
 
That's a good score. You are well on your way to breaking a million which was our measure of a good game when we were teenagers. Keep at it, practice practice, there is no other way. Also check out the robotron guidebook that is put out by 1500points. A ton of great info on there
 
robotron

i have hit 10 million on robotron. when you get to a million is when you start to master the game. alot of people cant even get to 100k, so well done. so your high score was not recorded, a reason to keep at it and get to a million.

i know when i started playing, my toughest screen was the grunt screen with the thousand grunts. i figured it out one day while my friend was talking to me and i was not paying attention. beginning the wave, stand your ground and draw the grunts in towards the center, shoot your way thru the area with the least grunts and run around the perimeter. you have room to run the perimeter cause you stood your ground in the beginning of the wave and drew them in towards you in the center. hope this helps, hell i hope you understand what i am writing!
 
I had a similar feeling a while back when I hit my personal best and entered SRN instead of SRM ... but, I have since crushed that old score and it is not a big deal anymore.

Just keep playing!

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Steve
MM
 
beginning the wave, stand your ground and draw the grunts in towards the center, shoot your way thru the area with the least grunts and run around the perimeter. you have room to run the perimeter cause you stood your ground in the beginning of the wave and drew them in towards you in the center.

This makes sense. I'm going to try it next time I hit Wave 9...
 
Ageed, an annoying "feature" of freeplay... I'd say using tokens is a good solution except you have the same problem if extra credits are there

Good score
 
ha, I heard that guidebook is full of misinformation.....

Actually, they are right even 100k is good in the evil world of robotron.

Every skillset or strategy you can practice is laid out in the guidebook per lots of insights from many online players. This is a fun write-up done by Eugene Jarvis, written last summer just for Robo fans. http://www.robotron2084guidebook.com/gameplay/startingjourney/enemydynamics/
 
I replaced my sticks as well as the springs and actuators in my Robotron recently. Then I adjusted the leaf switches to make sure the controls are as responsive as possible.

Definitely makes a difference...

On the first game with everything dialed in I managed to be just shy of 3 million (by 1,200 points). I could definitely tell that my newly repaired controls were allowing me to make moves that were previously impossible. It is now obvious that for years I had been playing this game with less than optimal controls.

My goal is to get 10 million/roll the game. Might be wishful thinking...
 
I replaced my sticks as well as the springs and actuators in my Robotron recently. Then I adjusted the leaf switches to make sure the controls are as responsive as possible.

Definitely makes a difference...

On the first game with everything dialed in I managed to be just shy of 3 million (by 1,200 points). I could definitely tell that my newly repaired controls were allowing me to make moves that were previously impossible. It is now obvious that for years I had been playing this game with less than optimal controls.

My goal is to get 10 million/roll the game. Might be wishful thinking...


Been playing Robotron a lot for a few months now and I am currently trying to determine what is wrong with my game. My scores were progressing nicely 200K...400K...600K then 1M on occasion then seemingly overnight I was back down to the 300-400K level and could not for the life of me progress from there. I started watching Youtube videos and noticed immediately that the guys on there had much easier times breaking out on the grunt wave than I did, they were doing things that were impossible on my game. I had much slower shooting rates and a slower moving guy than they did. I unplugged and replugged my ribbon cables and the difference was night and day...BAM! scored 2.5M on the very first game after not breaking 500K for weeks. After a few days the scores started dropping again and I could see my guy was slowing again, replugging the cables did not help so I swapped the ROM board and everything was immediately back up to speed and I hit 3M a few times before it slowed again, back to the 400K games. I swapped the whole CPU board...no change, put in all new ribbon cables...no change, new crystal...no change, reseated all chips on the ROM board...no change. All the voltages are good.


My next step is to burn a new set of ROMs, I do not have enough chips so waiting to get those. If anyone has any other suggestions I am all ears.
 
My goal is to get 10 million/roll the game. Might be wishful thinking...

nope, effectively you are already there!

remember, after you hit wave 40, all you are doing is playing wave 21 to 40 over and over again. so every 20 waves you'll deal with about 5 waves that might bleed a few more men than normal, but then you'll get a breather back at 21 (61, 81, 101, etc) style and build some men back up til you get to the wave 35-40 styles (55, 75, 95, 115, etc) . rinse and repeat!

and once you tweak your strategies to optimize how many men you are losing in that series of 20 waves, you will have men to spare when your attention span waivers during the 2 plus hrs of gameplay....and you'll get it. :)

personally for me, I don't have the attention span to stick to a 2 plus hr game. I have played to 10mil several times but have to do it from mame with pause button. on a real cab i get to 2 million or so and my attention span goes away.
 
Been playing Robotron a lot for a few months now and I am currently trying to determine what is wrong with my game. My scores were progressing nicely 200K...400K...600K then 1M on occasion then seemingly overnight I was back down to the 300-400K level and could not for the life of me progress from there. I started watching Youtube videos and noticed immediately that the guys on there had much easier times breaking out on the grunt wave than I did, they were doing things that were impossible on my game. I had much slower shooting rates and a slower moving guy than they did. I unplugged and replugged my ribbon cables and the difference was night and day...BAM! scored 2.5M on the very first game after not breaking 500K for weeks. After a few days the scores started dropping again and I could see my guy was slowing again, replugging the cables did not help so I swapped the ROM board and everything was immediately back up to speed and I hit 3M a few times before it slowed again, back to the 400K games. I swapped the whole CPU board...no change, put in all new ribbon cables...no change, new crystal...no change, reseated all chips on the ROM board...no change. All the voltages are good.


My next step is to burn a new set of ROMs, I do not have enough chips so waiting to get those. If anyone has any other suggestions I am all ears.

I've seen those performance variations across several real cabs. usually a bad ribbon cable makes the game seem slower? your variation must be coming from something on the rom board such as the special chips?

changing roms won't affect the speed up you are seeing.

-->>>are you checking the difficulty level after you swap boards? blue, i think, defaults to 3 which will give you an advantage during the grunt mob waves. the red/orangish/yellowish roms default to 5 which is noticably harder to a learning player.

strategy tip- compression is the trick to exiting the grunt mob, has little do with perceived performance of the board. if you hold back a bit the grunts will tend to compress more and oftentimes give you a better out than if you just make a dash for the closest out. the masters are using compression but you may not realize it unless you watch close.

it even works on difficulty 10, which is much more drastic a performance change than anything it "feels" like you are doing in swapping or reseating boards.
 
Been playing Robotron a lot for a few months now and I am currently trying to determine what is wrong with my game. My scores were progressing nicely 200K...400K...600K then 1M on occasion then seemingly overnight I was back down to the 300-400K level and could not for the life of me progress from there. I started watching Youtube videos and noticed immediately that the guys on there had much easier times breaking out on the grunt wave than I did, they were doing things that were impossible on my game. I had much slower shooting rates and a slower moving guy than they did. I unplugged and replugged my ribbon cables and the difference was night and day...BAM! scored 2.5M on the very first game after not breaking 500K for weeks. After a few days the scores started dropping again and I could see my guy was slowing again, replugging the cables did not help so I swapped the ROM board and everything was immediately back up to speed and I hit 3M a few times before it slowed again, back to the 400K games. I swapped the whole CPU board...no change, put in all new ribbon cables...no change, new crystal...no change, reseated all chips on the ROM board...no change. All the voltages are good.


My next step is to burn a new set of ROMs, I do not have enough chips so waiting to get those. If anyone has any other suggestions I am all ears.

Are you sure your joysticks are in proper working order? A way to tell is to start the game and on the first level try moving in all directions diagonally. If there is a bit of "lag" in any diagonal movement, try adjusting your leaf switches. Other things to swap out include the springs, acuators, and grommets. It could also be the wigit board or it's connections.
 
I've seen those performance variations across several real cabs. usually a bad ribbon cable makes the game seem slower? your variation must be coming from something on the rom board such as the special chips?

changing roms won't affect the speed up you are seeing.

-->>>are you checking the difficulty level after you swap boards? blue, i think, defaults to 3 which will give you an advantage during the grunt mob waves. the red/orangish/yellowish roms default to 5 which is noticably harder to a learning player.

strategy tip- compression is the trick to exiting the grunt mob, has little do with perceived performance of the board. if you hold back a bit the grunts will tend to compress more and oftentimes give you a better out than if you just make a dash for the closest out. the masters are using compression but you may not realize it unless you watch close.

it even works on difficulty 10, which is much more drastic a performance change than anything it "feels" like you are doing in swapping or reseating boards.


I am using the blue roms which default to level 5. All the scores I listed are level 5 scores. On level 10 I have been close to 1M many times and broke it once when all is good, 100-300K depending on luck is where I am at right now when things are bad. Having the game play like this is actually excellent training, I have learned so much about placement and movement strategies that once I get my speed back I expect to be able to tear up.

I have read quite a bit and I know the playing tricks, it's definitely a performance issue. The only way I can possibly make an edge is if I have a path with 4 or less grunts to shoot before I get to the edge, any more and I cannot get through them. Even if I do that I am normally not fast enough to circle them once I do get to the edge, they will catch me on the wall at 9:00 or 3:00 before I can get back under or on top of the circle. I have done tests and when the grunts are at max speed they are faster than my sprite, they can outrun me in a direct straight line from edge to edge, this is never supposed to be possible, the same speed as you is the best they are supposed to get.
 
Are you sure your joysticks are in proper working order? A way to tell is to start the game and on the first level try moving in all directions diagonally. If there is a bit of "lag" in any diagonal movement, try adjusting your leaf switches. Other things to swap out include the springs, acuators, and grommets. It could also be the wigit board or it's connections.

I have cleaned and adjusted the contacts on the joysticks, it did not help. I have not really focused on that because reseating the ribbon cables fixed me once and then swapping the ROM board fixed me the second time so I have been focused on the areas the ribbon cables are connected.
 
Pulling and reseating the ribbon cables can have a great effect on the cables. They're reasonable fragile and repeated screwing with them is not good. You should look closely at the solder joints, you could very well have cold solder joints.
 
I have read quite a bit and I know the playing tricks, it's definitely a performance issue. The only way I can possibly make an edge is if I have a path with 4 or less grunts to shoot before I get to the edge, any more and I cannot get through them. Even if I do that I am normally not fast enough to circle them once I do get to the edge, they will catch me on the wall at 9:00 or 3:00 before I can get back under or on top of the circle. I have done tests and when the grunts are at max speed they are faster than my sprite, they can outrun me in a direct straight line from edge to edge, this is never supposed to be possible, the same speed as you is the best they are supposed to get.

maybe I'm not understanding....grunts are designed to be way faster than the player when they are at full speed.

In Mame, using insight from Sean R., I can adjust the blitter timing so that the player is too sluggish. but that is manipulating the emulation of the special chips for blitter. so if you really have a blitter problem then wouldn't that manifest itself on just the rom board? yet you indicate 2 different rom boards started behaving the same?

what does yellowdog, make of a diagnosis? it's over my head.

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jon- here is how close you are to being able to play continually. If we guess that your RQ (see note below) is around 27.5k. that means 3 million is somewhere close to wave 109. and you have 123 men at your disposal. 109 waves / 123 men means you are losing around 1.128 men per wave. simply drop that value by 1 man every 7 waves and you have a number that lets you theoretically play indefinitely. at 109 waves, that means you've cycled through the 20 hardest waves almost 4 times! that is very good!

without every having seen you play, i'm going to put a bet that you have the same issue that cliff clavin and I did. you are dying 3-4 times per brain wave and by using "straight line" firing and hugging side walls to guard yourself, you will get that down to losing 1-3 men per brain wave. thus problem solved and you'll be a 10 million player. ...send payment for this session to paypal in value of $100 per hour. :)

note: RQ=early 80's VidKidz term meaning robotron quotient=score divided by wave. A master player hits 31k up to high end of 35k, a marathoner is 29kish-30kish, a decent player is 27,500 or a bit less.
 
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Just got back from a trip to NYC to compete in the Williams Manufacturer Challenge at Barcade. Had a blast and ALMOST took top scores for both Robotron & Sinistar (both were unseated in the last 20 minutes of the competition, go figure). The tourney was set up so that everyone posted their highest score with ONE LIFE. I was able post a Robotron score of just over 200K with just one man (level 5 difficulty). By my logic, this means that I should be able to break 500K on TGTS settings. Need to come off of the Diff 10 play for a while and see how high I can push my scores on TGTS.
 
maybe I'm not understanding....grunts are designed to be way faster than the player when they are at full speed.

In Mame, using insight from Sean R., I can adjust the blitter timing so that the player is too sluggish. but that is manipulating the emulation of the special chips for blitter. so if you really have a blitter problem then wouldn't that manifest itself on just the rom board? yet you indicate 2 different rom boards started behaving the same?

what does yellowdog, make of a diagnosis? it's over my head.

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jon- here is how close you are to being able to play continually. If we guess that your RQ (see note below) is around 27.5k. that means 3 million is somewhere close to wave 109. and you have 123 men at your disposal. 109 waves / 123 men means you are losing around 1.128 men per wave. simply drop that value by 1 man every 7 waves and you have a number that lets you theoretically play indefinitely. at 109 waves, that means you've cycled through the 20 hardest waves almost 4 times! that is very good!

without every having seen you play, i'm going to put a bet that you have the same issue that cliff clavin and I did. you are dying 3-4 times per brain wave and by using "straight line" firing and hugging side walls to guard yourself, you will get that down to losing 1-3 men per brain wave. thus problem solved and you'll be a 10 million player. ...send payment for this session to paypal in value of $100 per hour. :)

note: RQ=early 80's VidKidz term meaning robotron quotient=score divided by wave. A master player hits 31k up to high end of 35k, a marathoner is 29kish-30kish, a decent player is 27,500 or a bit less.


If you do some tests you will see that they do not get faster than you in straight line speed. They will always catch you because they use the diagonals to do so, once you are forced to go up or down they have you. But if you get a straight acrossed the board race set up, equal speed is the best they have, the cannot catch you from directly behind.

I am going to direct some attention on those special chips and their sockets. When I swapped ROM boards I do not remember if I swapped those chips also or not, I may have done so which obviously would carry the problem with them.
 
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