Well look at that. Great minds think alike. Love the tunes on the first level.
 

I finally finished The Incident today. Thoroughly satisfying in game play and storyline. It's fun and frustrating. The soundtrack is among the best of all NES games.

I am not sure quite how to put it, but the way the game finished was extremely well done. Not just the end I but the entire scenario that lead to the finale.

**minor spoiler** The segue from the difficulty of previous levels to the ease of levels 90 onward, with a slight ramp up in difficulty during the final levels was a great mechanism to express the climax/denouement/epilogue of the storytelling. It was also a much needed relief from the pure frustration of difficulty and shame of buying solutions.

My favorite song on the soundtrack was level 91-99. I listened to that for a while on the sound test after I was done. The music was inseparable from the atmosphere of the game.

Just want to say thanks to everyone who contributed to The Incident.

Damn I forgot about this. I still need to finish it. In the 60s and things started getting brutal. I've used up exactly one solution, then was like "I am such a dumbass" when I saw it. I was so close to solving the puzzle before I gave up.

The Incident by Khan, and 0-to-X by SoleGooseGames, both tax the brain in extreme ways. You get unlimited time so planning out moves and restarting over the course of hours can really leave one with a mental lactic burn of sorts.
 

Excellent game! One of the top homebrews out there!

Thanks, James. That really means a lot.
 

Just wait until 73

 

70s through 80s were quite tough. That is where I used most of my unlocks. Still some doable puzzles but I for sure needed the assist. I believe I ended up with 19 ulocks left over. I purposely tried not to use them until later levels because I had heard rumors if some near impossible puzzles.

You know, I bet I could add The Incident to the scoreboard for number of unlocks achieved!

^ I did check just to make sure, before i played last night.

Too complicated, I think. Going for "lowest score" it would be easy to say "zero unlocks" with a fresh save file, but that would be lame IMO.

Also the Incident keeps a number of interesting stats besides number of puzzles completed or "unlocks used". For instance it counts the total number of moves you have made in terms of cumulative block pushes (including counting every time you restart a puzzle), as well as the number of moves used to complete each puzzle.

Brian said that scoreboard can only check one location in memory for the score, but something like The Incident where less is better, one would need to complete he entire game (all 100 puzzles) and do it with the fewest cumulative moves for bragging rights. I don't think a simple algorithm of "check one memory location to dump score" would work. You would need detailed analysis of the save file to compile such a score.

Not entirely sure, but are there any games currently in the Scoreboard database where "less is better" rather than more? I wish there was an option to log "time to complete game event" for speedrunners. Scoreboard logs time played but AFAIK does not actively scan for events such as "game complete". Any game with a credit sequence or distinct ending screen would be doable. But since the scoreboard cannot scan RAM addresses without interrupting gameplay would defeat this purpose.

How is it too complicated? Obviously someone with the most unlocks has solved the most puzzles and used the least amount of solutions to solve puzzles they're stuck on.
 

So you have to subtract solutions used from puzzles unlocked. A perfect score would be 100.

I think "total moves" would be funny too. Some people would have huge scores...  

Obvious. Not just this. And I apologize if I add something stupid here: I assume that also you can restart from the beginning after finishing the game, and try to do better next time. This would add longevity to an already challenging game. I see no better meter of comparison than the fewest number of "help me out please" used, from a game to your next.

Also, and again sorry if this is a stupid question, there is a place you can link where it is explained how to program your score to be compatible with the AVS scoring system?
I mean, let say a game score goes from 100 to 9900, and x1000 digit is stored in zeropage $fe, x100 digit in $ff, and then you add 00 in the end. Would this be potentially compatible with AVS scoring system?

Only if you have the answer and a minute to waste, of course.
That would be very appreciated. Thanks!  

The score's digits needs to be sequential, either forwards or backwards (hex or decimal doesn't matter). And then I have the ability to tell the scoreboard if the score is x10 or x100, etc.
 

Two sequential bytes in RAM. Wonderful.
Thank you very much, Appreciated.
And sorry for the quick OT in your game thread.