Pod Competition

[Harrison]

Pod Hiscore Competition

Lets get things started with the first of the new classicamiga hiscore competitions.

I've chosen one of my favourite PD games called Pod. This is an Amiga remake of a classic C64 shoot 'em up game and was featured on the Cu Amiga magazine coverdisk #41. We ran this game for a competition on the old forum, but some of you missed it first time and as I find this game such fun I wanted to give it another go.


http://www.amiga.me.uk/off_site_images/hiscore_comps/pod1.png


The basic idea of the game is very simple. You move around the screen on a grid shooting all of the enemies before they destroy you. When something is destroyed part of the grid is destoryed along with it and you are then unable to move along that part of the grid. So make sure you don't trap yourself by destroying enemies where it might restrict your movement. The grid does slowly mend itself so destoyed parts are not perminent. Each level/wave has a time limit. Shoot everything you can until the time runs out to survive the level.

Game to be played: Pod
Platform: Amiga A500 OCS
Emulator: WinUAE (quickstart config: A500/A2000 - 1.3ROM, ECS Agnus, 512K Chip RAM + 512K slow RAM)
Difficulty Level: Normal
Length of Competition: Ended!
Competition Rules: Obtain the highest score!

Points to be won:

Ist Place:| 5000 points
2nd Place: | 2000 points
3rd Place: | 500 pointsGame Files: Game ADF attached

[Harrison]

Here is my first hiscore to get the competition rolling. I only had a quick go to get the first hiscore posted, so I hope to see some much better scores from everyone else. ;)


http://www.amiga.me.uk/off_site_images/hiscore_comps/pod2.png


Hiscore of 206,100 recorded for Harrison.

[Teho]

Allright, let's play. :)

http://www.home.no/teho/Composcreens/POD_001.png

That's 299,300

[Demon Cleaner]

I have no time, working for the site every spare minute I have :(

[Harrison]

Make Oz do the work, then you will have lots of time to take part! ;)

[Demon Cleaner]

I want to, but he's just some lazy guy, doing nothing, it's always the same with these youngsters. I'm doing the screenshooting and audio recording now myself. At least I'm sure that's it's done, and that it's done as good as possible ;)

[Harrison]

Like the old saying goes, if you want a job done properly, do it yourself!

[Vangar]

I'd play, but I'm like Demon Cleaner, i've got lots of work to do and i find it hard to find time to get on here =(

[TiredOfLife]

Apologies for the worst screen capture in history.
Also for not embedding, haven't got my head round that yet.

http://www.classicamiga.me.uk/off_site_images/hiscore_comps/POD_ToL.jpg

[AlexJ]

Apologies for the worst screen capture in history.
Also for not embedding, haven't got my head round that yet.

A screenshot of a video of your TV - brilliant! I take it that you used a real Amiga to play the game on.

[Teho]

Hah, as if it was going to be that easy.. :)

http://www.home.no/teho/Composcreens/POD_002.png

Actually I only barely beat it, 443,800.

[TiredOfLife]

Yes, played on a real Miggy.
Couldn't find the camera, so used a camcorder.
Couldn't find the software to do anything other than play the snapshot as a movie clip, so played that in windoze media player and took a screen print of that.

[Puni/Void]

Have given the game a couple of tries, so here is my score. Hopefully I'll manage to do better tonight. ;)

http://www.classicamiga.me.uk/off_site_images/hiscore_comps/POD_001.png

[Harrison]

Out of interest, what do you all think of Pod? It was one of my favourite tradition shoot 'em ups for years on the Amiga. Is great to see more hiscores being posted. :)

[TiredOfLife]

Never played it on a Miggy til yesterdsy bu remember it well from my 64 days.
Pity I didn't see the comp earlier.
Could have beaten the current posted scores with ease.
Ah well, maybe next time.

[Puni/Void]

Pod was an ok game, but I don't think I will or would have played it a lot. It works fine for competitions like this though. Guess I'm too spoiled with shooters like Project X, Deluxe Galaga and the likes. ;) (and Super Stardust)

[Harrison]

Never played it on a Miggy til yesterdsy bu remember it well from my 64 days.
Pity I didn't see the comp earlier.
Could have beaten the current posted scores with ease.
Ah well, maybe next time.

As the competition only really started to get more active just before it ended, I've decided to extend it by a week, so go for it TiredOfLife. Lets see what score you can post. :)

[Demon Cleaner]

This one's too tough for me, perhaps with a bit of training??

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y184/cioprgr/classicamiga/pod_001.png

[Harrison]

Like most Shoot 'em ups you just need to learn the patterns of the different enemies and which ones appear in each wave of attacks.

[Demon Cleaner]

you just needThat's already too much ;)

[TiredOfLife]

Sound.
I didn't like the way some of the buggers were looking at me.
Now I've got an excuse to sort them out.

[Teho]

I've been away all week, so I'm glad to see this competition is still running. Was afraid someone would beat the score I posted on sunday and then I wouldn't get a chance to beat it before the competition was over.

As for what I think about this game; I see it as one of the many excellent little shooters that the Amiga spawned. Doesn't really stand out, but isn't bad either. it's quite enjoyable to have a few quick goes at, and is an excellent competition game because of that as PG mentioned.

Another in the same vein we could consider for a later competition is a shareware title called Creepy Crawlies. It's an excellent take on Centipede with a few twists and very enjoyable as well.

[Harrison]

Sounds interesting. Any games that can be picked up and played quickly will be ideal for competitions. More so than games that require a lot of time dedicated to them as it will mean members with less time will still be able to take part.

[TiredOfLife]

Not had time until now

http://classicamiga.me.uk/off_site_images/hiscore_comps/690800C.jpg

[Puni/Void]

Ok, managed to get a new score. Here is the result. :) 745900.

http://www.classicamiga.me.uk/off_site_images/hiscore_comps/POD_005.png

[TiredOfLife]

Hmm, just noticed this comp ended at ten on Friday.
Was under the impression that as it had been extended by a week, it wouldn't close until ten this coming Monday.

[Harrison]

I will extend it till this coming Friday to give everyone a chance to try again for a better score.

[rayzorblue]

woohoo that means i get a chance to play yesss

[TiredOfLife]

Harrison, you are a gent.

[Puni/Void]

Sounds good! :)

[TiredOfLife]

Should have something in place to ensure better screen grabs in future, very shortly.


http://www.classicamiga.me.uk/off_site_images/hiscore_comps/1MIL.jpg

[Demon Cleaner]

Wow, big score :thumbs: I think I'll occupy the last rank in this competition. And your score is definitely the best so far, and if I'm right, the competition will end today.

[Puni/Void]

Damn, that's a VERY good score. You beat mine with over 300.000 points. Will do my best to beat it though! ;)

[Submeg]

Huzzah for TiredOfLife!

[Harrison]

@TiredofLife

I've converted the last image you posted into a jpg and changed it from an attachment into an image on the forum to make it easier to see.

This dropped the filesize down from 360K to 14K. Quite a difference you have to agree.

The competition will indeed be ending tonight at 10PM, so if anyone still wants to have a crack at entering a score get the images in quickly.

@everyone

I've now removed all attached images from this thread and changed them into embedded images in the actual posts. There are very good reason for this.

First it allows much easier viewing of the images directly from the thread.

Secondly some of the images attached were very large. Some of them were in BMP format and over 600KB in size. This is way too large! Each attachment on the forum gets stored in the forum database, so each of the images attached increases the database by quite a lot, which means when I do the daily forum database backups all these attachments are making the database backup files bigger and bigger.

There will be a slight change of submission rules from the start of the next competition. Please take a look at the competiton rules additions I have posted for these new rules. They mainly concern changes in how images need to be submitted to the site for the competitons.

[TiredOfLife]

Thanks Harrison.
As stated earlier, I hope to have something place shortly to make screengrabs a lot easier.
Also means the picture won't go through the processes it does at the moment.
This should make the picture quality better and therefore ok to post as a jpeg.

[Harrison]

Congratulations TiredOfLife on winning the first hiscore competition on the new forum. :thumbs:

I will be posting the final table of results later tonight along with the awards. :)

[Puni/Void]

Congratulations with the victory, TiredOfLife. Well done! :)

[TiredOfLife]

Cheers.
Not a bad start to the year.
Now if I could just get some hardware for OS4...

[Demon Cleaner]

I made the table, as Harrison seems to be occupied:

Rank|Name|Points

1st|
TiredOfLife|
1.160.500|

2nd|
P G|
745.900|

3rd|
Teho|
443.800|

4th|
Harrison|
206.100|

5th|
Demon Cleaner|
137.400|


I hope I didn't forget someone :unsure:

[Harrison]

Cheers DC, thanks for doing the final score table.

And the awards go to the following members:

Rank | Member | Points Won
1st | TiredOfLife | 5000 points
2nd | P G | 2000 points
3rd | Teho | 500 Points

Congratulations to the top three winners on their great scores.

As well as the points awards for the winning scores, there is also a Hiscore competition league table that will continue throughout the competitions. For each competition members will be awarding position points that will go towards their position in the overall Hiscore Competition league table. See the Hiscore Leaderboard thread (http://forum.classicamiga.com/showthread.php?t=363) for the details and the current standings on the leaderboard.

[Submeg]

So what is the next competition? anyone had any ideas?

[Harrison]

I think we should bring back another old favourite from the old forums to help kickstart the competitions. Pinball Fantasies. But this time a different table than before. Good idea?

[Demon Cleaner]

I think I'm better at pinball games than shmups, bring it on.

[Submeg]

Oh yea! Sounds good to me!

[Teho]

Yup, go for it. :)

[TiredOfLife]

Haven't played that in a while.
Would be good to do so again.
Sound.:yesyes:

[AlexJ]

Gotta love a Pinball Fantasies comp. Which table was used last time?

[Harrison]

Partyland was used in the original competition.

So which one do you all want to use for this new competition? Personally I want to use the Stones 'n' bones table, mainly because it tends to be the underrated table compared to Partyland and Billion Dollar Gameshow..

[Demon Cleaner]

Personally I want to use the Stones 'n' bones tableMe too, I like that one.

[Teho]

Stones 'n' Bones underrated next to Billion Dollar Gameshow? I never liked Billion Dollar, always thought that was the worst table in the whole series of games.

I'm good with Stones 'n' bones. But Speed Devils would be fun too. Any of the two is fine with me.

[AlexJ]

Yeah, I tend to play on partyland and Billion$ more than the other two, but it'd be good to try a different one.

[TiredOfLife]

Got to play Stones and Bones for the sound effects alone.

[Harrison]

OK, I will be launching the next Hiscore competition to start tomorrow, so everyone get practising their pinball skills. I will let this one run for 3 weeks to give everyone a chance to take part and post a good score. Have fun.

[Puni/Void]

This will be cool! Looking forward to the Pinball competition. :) Good luck everyone!