MAMEWorld Forums - EmuChat - Re: Wiebe's got the record

> > The search space of possible Donkey Kong games, while finite, is almost unfathomably
> large...I imagine this would rack up scores far higher than any human realistically
> could--perhaps 2,000,000 or more.
>
> Do you really think so? That they are still as far as only about 50% of a potential
> maximum? Personally I would IMAGINE (I can only imagine since I've never watched a
> record setting DK and it's techniques, or observed their loss-of-opportunity moments
> despite setting a record) that the top players are already maximizing every potential
> opportunity to control and group barrels, maximizing hammer-use and taking advantage
> of known exploits to achieve all they can... taking any risk necessary to achieve a
> top score. It's not like they are avoiding risk since the consequence is simply a
> restart. Unlike pacman, which has a defined maximum score... dk has SOME randomness
> to it due to barrel behavior and grouping... but still... at some point there is a
> maximum number of barrels in the time allotted... a maximum number of opportunities
> to group the barrels... and a maximum amount of time and levels. To come up with a
> theoretical maximum would be a matter of counting how many barrels are possible in
> the time on each level... assume the maximum score is produced by every barrel, and
> derive a theoritical maximum from that. Someone here must care enough about DK to
> crunch that basic formula out.
>
> You may be right... but seems to me, they are already approaching that asymtotic
> maximum potential score.

Well, 2,000,000 was definitely a guess, but doesn't to my mind seem unreasonable for a theoretical maximum (probably only actually reachable by a save-state-wielding AI like I described). According to this article, Dean Saglio scored 1,136,400 in MAME, so there's a lower bound. One could also, if they had access to a lot of high-score videos, track the record score for every individual level and add them together. I think you're under-emphasizing the consequence of losing a like during a Donkey Kong high-score attempt. Sure, you can start over, but a full game takes a couple of hours. If a player played as aggressively as possible, they'd never reach the kill screen. Things like barrels and fireballs are too unpredictable (unless, say, you're a shamelessly cheating AI that checks the program RAM to figure out the next move). In truly uninhibited play, you could do things like repeatedly jumping back and forth over fireballs, not worrying about them turning the wrong way. You could also strategically lose lives, finding the level you can score highest in and playing it three times until time ran out. It seems like most high-score players have struggled just to reach the kill screen.

You might get somewhere with tracking all of the possible ways to score points, and trying to place a limit on how many times they could occur in each stage. This could at least get you an upper bound, though that would probably be more than could even theoretically be achieved.