What everyone should know about leaderboards and score...

[Gimli]

@James: It's to let them blush for awhile before taking them down.

[The Serious Spoon]

|LE|Suicidal, maybe you didn't play one of the secret levels, lowering the amount of secrets you could obtain?

[Alen Ladavac]

That, and difficulty changes maximum killcounts (though it think it doesn't influence secret counts).

[LuminaryJanitor]

But as far as I can tell, Serious has the most enemies, and I believe it's less than 7000. And I'm pretty certain that the secret count is 89, unless there's a third secret level I don't know about.

[Finzy]

I'm curious, does inf. ammo lower your score? (I hope it does, 'cause I'm playing without it on Mental and wouldn't like someone to go past my scores more cheaply ).

[|LE|Suicidal]

Originally Posted by LuminaryJanitor

But as far as I can tell, Serious has the most enemies, and I believe it's less than 7000. And I'm pretty certain that the secret count is 89, unless there's a third secret level I don't know about.

Serious mode does have the most kill count with somewhere around 6700-6900, and Mental mode is just Hard with the fading. With (all?) 15 levels, secret count shows 89. Where are the other 9 secrets and 400 enemies that I saw some people have?

Originally Posted by Finzy

I'm curious, does inf. ammo lower your score? (I hope it does, 'cause I'm playing without it on Mental and wouldn't like someone to go past my scores more cheaply ).

And yeah: multiplier goes down by 8x. No one with it on will have any chance of catching you without any other additions.

[Alen Ladavac]

I will have to add this in my OP: The Karnak Demo level counts as well.

[|LE|Suicidal]

Originally Posted by Alen Ladavac

I will have to add this in my OP: The Karnak Demo level counts as well.

Ah HA! It all makes sense now!

You may also want to add something else: when looking at people's score's on the leaderboard, it has a difficulty and multiplier. Those reflect the highest difficulty and highest multiplier of just one level (if it's the highest score for one). Just beating hatshepsut on x78 was one of the most difficult things in the game. Even though I did do it on Hatshepsut, all the other levels are on serious (x50), but it still displays on my name Mental (x78). It's a bit misleading to the scores on the top of the board.

[reboot2099]

Suicidal, Hatshepsut mental (x78) is easy compared to sand canyon! That was something I hope I won't be stupid enough to try EVER again lol

Alen, thanks for the Karnak demo info. I didn't know it counted (as many others, I think).

Oh, and just one question. Does picking items up count for a good chunk of the score? I am in the middle of doing Valley of Kings in mental and for a good chunk of it, I was at full health, so i couldn't pick up health and I didn't want to take the chance to take a hit. I hope it doesn't hinder my score too much cause it would be kinda unfair to be too great to have the high score! lol

[|LE|Suicidal]

Originally Posted by reboot2099

Suicidal, Hatshepsut mental (x78) is easy compared to sand canyon! That was something I hope I won't be stupid enough to try EVER again lol

Alen, thanks for the Karnak demo info. I didn't know it counted (as many others, I think).

Oh, and just one question. Does picking items up count for a good chunk of the score? I am in the middle of doing Valley of Kings in mental and for a good chunk of it, I was at full health, so i couldn't pick up health and I didn't want to take the chance to take a hit. I hope it doesn't hinder my score too much cause it would be kinda unfair to be too great to have the high score! lol

I was going to do sand canyon, until there popped up a way to make it x83. Now I won't bother.


And it took me a couple of hours, but I beat the karnak Demo Mental, no health, no armor, enemy strength at 100% (x74) and after I beat it, I'm still no where close to first place (with a multiplier of just 60). I'm very annoyed, and I don't understand...

[Brute]

Originally Posted by |LE|Suicidal

I'm very annoyed, and I don't understand...

Ditto.
I don't even-

[LuminaryJanitor]

Originally Posted by reboot2099

Oh, and just one question. Does picking items up count for a good chunk of the score?

Nope.

From memory, health and armour add the same amount to your score as they do to your health/armour. So a green bottle is worth 25, green armour is worth 50, pills/shards are 1 point. I think ammo, whether it's a box of shells or a Serious pack, is 5 points.

So basically, as long as you're going to finish under the par time, it's probably not worth a three-second detour to pick any of this stuff up.

Originally Posted by |LE|Suicidal

And it took me a couple of hours, but I beat the karnak Demo Mental, no health, no armor, enemy strength at 100% (x74) and after I beat it, I'm still no where close to first place (with a multiplier of just 60). I'm very annoyed, and I don't understand...

OK, a couple of tips:
- Mental won't necessarily get you the most points. You get a higher base score on Serious because there are more enemies, and this is often enough to outweigh the multiplier.
- Kill counts are where the points are. Try your best to trigger all the spawns. e.g. at the pool in Karnak, you should make a full lap, grab all the underwater rockets and both secrets, and go right to the back wall on both sides of the building.

[Brute]

Originally Posted by LuminaryJanitor

Nope.

From memory, health and armour add the same amount to your score as they do to your health/armour. So a green bottle is worth 25, green armour is worth 50, pills/shards are 1 point. I think ammo, whether it's a box of shells or a Serious pack, is 5 points.

So basically, as long as you're going to finish under the par time, it's probably not worth a three-second detour to pick any of this stuff up.

On the other hand, the enemies spawned from many of the health/armor/ammo items can prove quite beneficial.

[|LE|Suicidal]

Originally Posted by Brute

Ditto.
I don't even-

It wouldn't have been so bad if I didn't spend so much time doing it!

Originally Posted by LuminaryJanitor

OK, a couple of tips:
- Mental won't necessarily get you the most points. You get a higher base score on Serious because there are more enemies, and this is often enough to outweigh the multiplier.
- Kill counts are where the points are. Try your best to trigger all the spawns. e.g. at the pool in Karnak, you should make a full lap, grab all the underwater rockets and both secrets, and go right to the back wall on both sides of the building.

I wish there was something in here I didn't do. But this is valuable! Proof that Mental won't always outweigh Serious is right here! I only missed about 10-20 enemies out of the max. But it's very surprising to me how drastically different the scores are (are you first?) with a x14 difference. I guess I understand, but this is good. Now each level may take a different set of multipliers for the high score instead of them all being the same. I may redo this level with an experiment... You beat it on serious mode, right?


------Well Ok. I beat it on serious (with enemy strength bumped up because I was feeling like a maniac without armor), and there actually was a MASSIVE difference between the modes Hard (or Mental) and Serious. Not only was there a 100+ more enemies, they all gave much more points (different enmies where weaker ones were). I knew this was true before, but I didn't think it would be to this extent.

[LuminaryJanitor]

Congratulations, I see you're on top now for Karnak Demo

I know, Mental vs. Serious can be a pretty huge difference. Just went through on Serious x65 and topped my Mental score by about 200,000,000 points...

[|LE|Suicidal]

Originally Posted by LuminaryJanitor

Congratulations, I see you're on top now for Karnak Demo

I know, Mental vs. Serious can be a pretty huge difference. Just went through on Serious x65 and topped my Mental score by about 200,000,000 points...

Sweet! I wish I had the patience for it.

[Squadala]

Originally Posted by LuminaryJanitor

Nope.
OK, a couple of tips:
- Mental won't necessarily get you the most points. You get a higher base score on Serious because there are more enemies, and this is often enough to outweigh the multiplier.
- Kill counts are where the points are. Try your best to trigger all the spawns. e.g. at the pool in Karnak, you should make a full lap, grab all the underwater rockets and both secrets, and go right to the back wall on both sides of the building.

I did all of this and am currently #8 (SUPERKILLA1231312312) on the combined single player scoreboard. I didn't even alter the difficulty by doing things like changing enemy strength. Triggering every spawn makes Serious mode a bit more difficult, but the points are more than worth it.

[|LE|Suicidal]

What the deal with the guy in first place for the leaderboard? He got 1.5 billion points on Alley of the Sphinxes on normal (x30). It looks like some kind of bug.

[Wezilla]

Originally Posted by |LE|Suicidal

What the deal with the guy in first place for the leaderboard? He got 1.5 billion points on Alley of the Sphinxes on normal (x30). It looks like some kind of bug.

Very concern ! This is impossible. Croteam have you see this score ?

[Alen Ladavac]

Just wait a day or two... and you'll see.

[Wezilla]

Lol - Can't Wait

[Finzy]

Can you reset those people's scores who used the powerup cheat? I think that would be perfectly justified.

[Alen Ladavac]

I believe I've mentioned somewhere else: from the data in the current leaderboard entries, we cannot know which options exactly were used. We can see that someone with x83 has obviously used it, but if you e.g. turn on infinite ammo and then disable powerups, the resulting number is undiscrenible from some other combination.

Unfortunately, I think that the only remedy is for everyone to disable powerups and get a free x5 extra on all their scores.

[|LE|Suicidal]

Originally Posted by Alen Ladavac

Just wait a day or two... and you'll see.

Is there a way to delete the score? Even though it's red and says HACKED, he's still in first, and everyone below him is still one place below where they should be. And the people who are around 100th place, or 200th place, there are like 6 people with HACKED in their names before them, so they really are 6 or so places higher than what is says.

[Gimli]

Don't worry, this is only temporary so that everyone can see they are pathetic cheaters. They'll be dealt with once they've blushed a little as Alen likes to say.

[Brute]

Originally Posted by Alen Ladavac

Just wait a day or two... and you'll see.

Oh, so diabolical...

[reboot2099]

Originally Posted by Alen Ladavac

I believe I've mentioned somewhere else: from the data in the current leaderboard entries, we cannot know which options exactly were used. We can see that someone with x83 has obviously used it, but if you e.g. turn on infinite ammo and then disable powerups, the resulting number is undiscrenible from some other combination.

Unfortunately, I think that the only remedy is for everyone to disable powerups and get a free x5 extra on all their scores.

As someone who used that cheat once to get back to first place on Hatshepsut, I'd like to say I'm all in favor on deleting every scores that used the cheat!

I understand why you cannot know who used it, but would it be possible to delete at least every scores that are higher than the max of the difficulty level used? (ex.: delete everyone with more than x78 on mental etc. Don't know the max for other difficulties but you know what I mean)

That way, those who don't know the code because they don't read forums will have at least a shot at getting a higher score. If somebody uses the cheat to have infinite ammo but still has x78 on mental, for example, he could still get beaten by someone doing mental on x78 with the standard options. I think it would be a little unfair still but a very good alternative.

Or the other solution I see would be to put back the powerup option in the menu with a future patch. Sure, people who don't read forums will wonder what it does, but at least they'll have a shot at disabling it without the need for any outside info.

If you say that without a doubt, any scores with the cheat will stay forever, well I'll have to resign and do every levels with it. I guess if you can't beat them, join them!

[LuminaryJanitor]

Having used it to top the leaderboard myself, I wouldn't oppose it either, if it could be done properly. But I did it at Serious x65 - below the normal maximum - so I wouldn't be affected. And if the guy who used it to get first place (probably second by now, at the rate Suicidal was going ) isn't affected, I don't think it's much of a solution.

I've thought about it a bit, and if it's not possible to repair the scoreboards, the only reasonable (semi-) solution is to enable it by default for everyone with the next patch.

[reboot2099]

Well, I am now in the process of finishing the game in serious mode at x65 all legit. Of course, it might be harder for me to get a better score than you, if possible at all. But I at least have a shot at it cause your multiplier isn't better than mine. If I was a better player, I'd still could kick your butt! lol But I'm not that great so I won't. I thought you didn't use cheats, that's why I didn't. Guess I'll have to redo it WITH the cheat enabled! lol

And yes, I agree with the solution of enabling the cheat for everyone, if possible.

[Brute]

I'm not using the console command regardless. I'd rather be lower on the board with all legit scores, than use some lame exploit.