Lemon/EAB Super League 2012 - Round 6: Deluxe Galaga AGA

[mihcael]

Lemon/EAB Super League 2012 - Round 6






Rules:
This round starts today and will end Saturday 26th May, 11:59pm UK Time.
Score as many points as possible.
Post screenshots of your high score in this thread, and write the score underneath.
Screenshot maximum size of 400px width please, or use a thumbnail.
Don't cheat! No continues or passwords.
You must use the latest version of Deluxe Galaga AGA (v2.6, full version) - links below.
Play Normal difficulty, and no autofire allowed as it is a power-up in the game.
Game Preferences should be set like the following,



Game Info:
Deluxe Galaga Lemon Page

Get the Game:
[HD ADF]
[HDF]
[LHA Archive]
[WHDLoad]

Round 6 Current Scores:
(Friday 25th - 13:43 UTC)
Pos.... Name................................................ Score............ Pts

1. premmisseth (LA) ............................... 83,264,220 ........ 15
   
2. Anakirob (EAB) ................................... 65,405,410 ........ 12
   
3. Harry (EAB) ........................................ 43,628,170 ........ 10
   
4. Biscuit (LA) ......................................... 29,140,480 ........ 9
   
5. Graham Humphrey (EAB) ................... 24,327,810 ........ 8
   
6. ChrisN82 (LA) ..................................... 16,794,170 ........ 7
   
7. mailman (EAB) ....................................... 6,662,495 ........ 6
   
8. lifeschool (LA) ....................................... 4,649,950 ........ 5
   
9. mihcael (LA) .......................................... 4,215,360 ........ 4
   
10. akabei (LA) ........................................... 4,092,270 ........ 3
    
11. Predseda (LA) ....................................... 2,624,980 ........ 2
    
12. capehorn (EAB) ..................................... 2,546,330 ........ 1
    
13. Lonewolf10 (EAB) .................................. 1,893,830 ........ 0
    
14. LinesMachine (LA) ................................. 1,088,860 ........ 0
    
15. aca0808 (LA) ............................................ 500,885 ........ 0
    
16. madot (LA) ............................................... 230,570 ........ 0
    
17. kkgarbod (EAB) ........................................ 108,970 ........ 0
    

Lemon (27,612,836) vs EAB (28,514,043)

Extras:
EAB's Round 6 thread is HERE.
Check out the C64 Games Competition at our sister site Lemon64.

All new players are welcome at any time. Join us!

[akabei]

Here's my first go



score: 1 366 395

[mihcael]

Welcome to the comp! Nice start!

[akabei]

[lifeschool]

Not so many tips from me this round, but I can tell you what all the icons do:-

Icons:
Money - Seen as small coins in the main game, red cornered 'notes' in the meteor storm, and green cards in the memory maze
- Silver coins = 10 credits
- Gold coins = 50 credits
- Green coins = 100 credits
- Blue coins = 200 credits


Points - Seen as blue cards in the memory maze or circular meteors in meteor maze, collect for points

Lives - Max lives = 4 (any extra lives will count as adding Armour), seen as red hearts, cost 400 credits in the shop


More Speed - Seen as an 'S' symbol - speeds up ship, max collectable = 10, minimum level = 4 for meteor storm, costs 50.C in shop


Less Speed - Not Collectable - slows the ship by one increment = costs 150.C in shop

Extra Bullet - Seen as a 'B' icon, gives 1 bullet for single shoot, two bullets for double shoot, x2 needed to increase triple or quad shot, or any higher weapon.

Autofire Unit - Seen as a ship with three yellow dots above it, unleashes all your bullets in one go, rather useless unless you have x10+ bullet upgrades and then it works quite well.


Rank Marker - Seen as coloured orbs, always found inside bosses, collect all six colours for a 'rank' upgrade and points, costs 300.C in the shop. The rank will only go up only after a warp. If you have full rank and collect more orbs you'll go up another rank. If you have the rank of Admiral and you buy more rank markings you will get 1M points.


Extra Time - Seen as two hands of a clock on a blue background, extra time before the 'destroyer' comes along. 1500.C in shop


Gem Bomb - Seen as a grey bomb on red or blue background, blows up everything, pull back on stick to activate tractor beam. Collect gems for more points. e.g. green gems are worth 2k each.


Money Bomb - Seen as a grey bomb on a PINK background, blows everything up and leaves money behind. Can deliver 1500.C+ depending on how many enemies are left on screen which turn into random coins.


Scoop - Seen as an inverted triangle, gives x2 extra guns and x2 shields (max) for one stage (i.e. four levels) only. Extra 'scooped' enemies will die and will give a large points bonus.


Memory Maze - Seen as nine dots, enter the maze to find more money and lives and cash multipliers by matching two identical symbols together. Finding a skull in the maze will not reduce your speed/firepower and will simply exit this mini-game.


Meteor Storm - Seen as random dots, enter for cash and points bonuses, 100k and 1000.C for full level completion (going slow). Hold down fire to speed up the level. If you hold down fire and fly fast for 100% of the level you still get 100k score but this time you get 2500.C cash. The colour of the meteors will also reflect the skull colour(s) you need to find.

'x2' - Seen as an X2 icon, doubles points for kills, doubles money inside enemies, X2 chance of points/money in meteor storm.


'x5' - Seen as an X5 icon, x5's points for kills, x5's money inside enemies, X5 chance of points/money in meteor storm


Money Multiplyer - Seen as an 'xC' icon on PINK background, often found in memory maze, multiplies current cash by random number.

Reverse - Seen as '[]' symbol, reverses controls

Mirror Mode - Seen as '11' symbol - Gives you two ships, one of the left and one on the right, one ship mirrors the other.


Letters - Seen as 'E','X','T','R','A'. Collect all five for an extra life.


Armour - Seen as a war hammer (angel), ship will survive one hit, can be upgraded to x4 max, costs 600.C in shop or 400.C if lives=4


Shield - Seen as a Green Circle with a green dot inside, protects ship against everything for 10 seconds. Collect 2 shields in a row for 20 seconds, x3 in a row for 30 seconds shields.

Warp - Seen as a ship with a red tail, collect to move on to the next set of four levels. Generally avoid unless facing difficult sub-bosses.


Egg Gem - Collect for 1000 points, only appears after destroying the laser ship.

Skulls - Seen as Red, Green and Blue skulls, degrades x1 weapon, x1 bullet, x1 speed on contact unless found in memory maze. Collect ALL three colours for the 'Super' Weapon and more speed. If you collect ALL three colours with the quad weapon you are upgraded to fireballs. The colour of the meteors in the meteor storm will indicate which colour skull you still need to collect. Collecting a skull will ALSO increase the chances of extra lives and the cash multiplyer bonuses appearing.


Mystery - Seen as a '?' icon, random but often contains money



Weapons:
General - Collect a weapon to employ it, collect the same icon again for extra bullets

Single Shoot - Seen as a '1' symbol, quite USELESS and SLOW even with many bullets and autofire.


Double Shoot - Seen as two green dots, GOOD firepower, FAST and powerful if you have x10+ bullet upgrades, costs 100.C in shop


Triple Shoot - Seen as three blue dots, GOOD for shooting diagonally and quite powerful but SLOW, costs 200.C in shop


Quad Shoot - Seen as four white dots, pretty AVERAGE(*) firepower (even with many bullet upgrades) even if dead on target, VERY SLOW, not available in shop.


'Super' Weapon - Not collectable (except by collecting all three skulls), VERY GOOD, especially with x10+ bullets, has diagonal shoot, FAST, costs 500.C in shop

Fire Balls - Not Collectable, GREAT weapon if x15+ bullet upgrades and autofire bought, GOOD Speed, costs 750.C in shop

Plasma - Not Collectable - EXCELLENT weapon, especially with x15+ bullets and auto, VERY FAST, costs 990.C in shop

Laser Beam - Not Collectable - EXCELLENT weapon, even without so many upgrades, VERY FAST, costs 2000.C in shop

War 1 Plasma - Not Collectable - DEVASTATING! weapon but not worth buying over 'normal Plasma', 3000.C in shop


Ships:
Drones - The small ships found on every level, these may have several 'skins' to destroy, may also be used with 'Scoop' for max x2 sidearm upgrade / armour which lasts for one section of four levels (max).


Destroyers / a.k.a./ The 'Hurry Up' Ship - Seen as a UFO if the player doesn't clear a level within 2 minutes, fires homing missiles, almost impossible to kill. If you do kill one you'll get whichever rank marker / colour(s) you're missing. After this has appeared 8 times, a Money Ship will appear.


Beam Blaster / a.k.a./ The Laser Ship - Seen at random, smaller green UFO, fires deadly laser beams down the whole screen, almost impossible to kill. If you kill it you'll get the Egg Gem (see Egg Gem)


Pirates! /a.k.a. / The Cash Sucker /a.k.a. / The Thief Ship - Seen as a large UFO with bug eyes, collects all the money you've found, VERY HARD to kill but can give 2000+ money


The 'Money Ship' - Seen as an octagonal ship with a large red dome. Appears after the 'hurry up' ship has appeared 8 times. Once this ship appears it must be destroyed to complete the stage. VERY HARD to kill with just single shot, and more 'hurry up' ships will appear and fire up to 10 missiles at a time. Can give 3000+ money


Sub-Bosses - Seen at warp malfunctions or after every four levels. These fire guided bullets, harder to kill but possible if you consentrate all your shots on each one individually. These sub-bosses 'spin' faster as you hit them until they blow up. Contain rank markers.


Motherships - Seen after every 25 levels, huge ships!, these take a lot of shots unless you have 'Super' weapon or above. These will begin to 'spark' as you hit them, the more sparks the closer you are to destroying them. Kill to collect 5 or 6 random rank markers.


Misc Info:
Game Secret - Not collectable, gives away a semi-useless secret - costs 1000.C in shop

Kamikaze Waves - Small drones fly down the screen in lines firing bullets, then fly back up again. Kill all drones in a line for a small bonus. Collecting Warp, Memory Maze or Meteor Storm will skip the level and gives no bonus.

Bonus Waves - Small Drones attack in patterns but DO NOT fire back. Kill all 20 drones for a small bonus. Collecting a Warp, a Memory Maze or Meteor Storm will complete the level and also give you the 20/20 kill bonus for free.

Warp Malfunctions - Happen at random. A random number (from 1 - 8, but most likely 4) sub-bosses will appear to be destroyed. Kill these ships for a random rank marker.



Tips:
All you have to do is concentrate on the very bottom of the screen and weave in between the firepower raining down from above. To begin with the player can move to the left or right to avoid the enemies, and there is usually one safe place on screen at least until after level 25 or so.

Collect speed and bullets as your first priority. X5 speed and X10 bullets should be a good start. Try to collect weapons as icons rather than trying to afford them in the shop. In the shop, buy only bullets, speed, or extra lives unless you're loaded (in which case go for the Plasma Weapon), or unless you're out of a good weapon (Double shoot works well and is also cheap). Collect the 4-way candlestick shaped icon for 4-way shoot as you can now die twice and still have good firepower. The best weapon is actually the Plasma Weapon or 2-way shoot with 30+ bullet upgrades and autofire unit - either way the enemies are gonna die pretty fast.

Remember, any extra lives bought after x4 will give you ship armour; making this a cheap armour upgrade.

If you see Meteor storms or memory station maze icons, go for them! - as Storms and mazes can contain unlimited money and score (if you're lucky) and will skip the current level. Complete the meteor storm for 100k points and 1k cash. Hold down the fire button in Meteor storms to speed up, but be careful, as the storm will be much harder. Hold down fire for the whole meteor level for a 'Super' bonus.

Avoid 'Warps' unless you're desparate to move on. If you die you'll lose x1 speed upgrade, and you're firepower will be reduced to the next lowerst 'upgrade' all the way down to single shot. If you're left with single-shot, especially after level 15 or so - GIVE UP! (press ESC) as you'll hardly ever come back from that situation.

Good Luck.

(*) - Quad fire is AVERAGE/GOOD because it tends to fire blocks of shots very slowly. The weapon is effective on target but blunders when there are pressing enemies all over the screen. Even the two shot is better with it's cover spread. To make matters worse, the autofire unit has a habit of spitting out all the bullets in the quad weapon all in one go; leaving you absolutely defenceless until all those bullets either find a target, or leave the screen.

(**) - icons pics taken from the official Galaga web site.

[lifeschool]

First go at this, managed to complete the meteor storm once - collected the 1k cash and bought a plasma weapon. Not bad for starters.

This was scored on 2.6C non AGA version, which is IDENTICAL to 2.6C AGA (except for the graphics). I hope this score still counts as they are the same game... What happens if someone is playing on a real A500/A600/A2000/A3000 OCS machine without AGA?, are they still allowed to play this round using the non AGA version?

Score: 1,202,010 (in case it counts)

[premmisseth]

How about some tips how to get this game started? :/ Until now I've only played ADF files in winuae, but now it seems there's no ADF version of this. (Yes, I'm pretty noobish in software/hardware). So, what do I need and what do I have to do to be able to play this game?

[lifeschool]

@Seth - The easiest way (if you have WinUAE) is to set up a new harddisk file, install WB on to it and then simply unpack the LHA archive to the HD and run it. Setting up WinUAE to run WHDLoad games is much harder and would take a long time to explain as you need to get some files from the Skick archive and a few other things as well. If you're struggling I guess I could put the AGA LHA version onto an ADF file, which would make this process easy for everyone - as long as they have an AGA machine / emul. The AGA rule still seems a bit overkill to me.

[premmisseth]

Meh, looked up some tutorials and stuff but still haven't got a clue what to do. Don't even know how to setup harddisk, how to install WB etc.. Totaly lost here cause I don't know what I'm doing.

[lifeschool]

I can only assume you have access to WinUAE? If so then try this:

1. Download this file, it's the LHA AGA version on a HD floppy (1.8MB) ADF.

2. Boot WinUAE.

3. Click on 'Quickstart',
Model = A1200, Config = 4Meg Fast Ram Expanded, Host Config= Default.

4. Click on 'Display', Native Mode = 'Full Screen'

5. Click on 'Floppy Drives'. Select 3.5" HD (not 3.5" DD) next to where it says 'df0:'.
Click the three dots and select the DeluxeGalagaAGAHD.adf you just downloaded.

6. Click on 'Configurations', click 'save as..', and save it with a suitable name.

7. Click Start.

The game takes quite a few minutes to load and decompress.

This ADF has been pre-configured with the compo settings and it will save your highscores to disk within the game itself. Note: requires 2MB chip ram.

When you want to load the game back again, just:

1. Boot WinUAE,
2. Click Configurations,
3. Highlight your saved config file (see step 6 above) and click 'Load'
4. Click 'start'.

[premmisseth]

lifeschool you're a lifesaver. Much much thanks for this, I've managed to start the game.
In the same time I've stumbled upon who elses tutorial then yours on youtube how to create hard disks. Cause maybe some day I will have to use whdload files and guess is good to know those things.

Is this the right tutorial to start with then?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gh8hZSZPCMA


P.S. Sorry for beeing such a noob.

[lifeschool]

Yes, that tutorial will take you through the steps to set up your own harddisk file in WinUAE - and after doing so you can install DG from the LHA. The (never completed) third part of that tutorial series was supposed to be how to set up WHDload for running games but I never got around to making it. Good to know the HD ADF works in the meantime.

[Biscuit]

[akabei]

I'm using 2.6b AGA(is there any difference to 2.6c?) downlodable as adf file here(might be easier for winuae users to get it run)
http://oron.com/aksvm43z018y

[Graham Humphrey]

Apparently the ECS version has a difference in the frequency the items occur. So I was told. So I'm not going to risk playing a different version here.

I don't think 2.6b is the full version - the full version doesn't fit onto one disk as far as I'm aware. So we must stick with 2.6c AGA version for this round.
_________________
Lemon/EAB Super League 2013: Round 6 - Arcade Pool
Round 7 - Cast your votes...