MKDS Players' Page

Prolonged Rocket Boost

Sully @ Monday, December 26th [link]

A new technique has been found for time trial racing involving the rocket boost lasting potentially throughout the entire race.

I've talked about this with a lot of people now, and I'm pretty sure we've settled on a decision.

The glitch will not be allowed for time trial submissions on our main site.

One major issue is the accidental usage of this glitch at the start of races. Michael Fried has proposed a good solution to this problem with his course-specific rules. These rules will obviously be altered as we se fit or when more information arises.

I feel that there's a lot of confusion regarding the "partial" usage of the glitch. If you race pretending that you dont know about the glitch, you will not break any of our rules. The rules are just made to stop unnatural continuation of the rocket boost by taking an odd racing line to keep the boost going.

This decision causes a problem because our site will no longer have the real "world records". By that, I mean that there will be faster times out there, using the glitch. As a result, we will create a smaller section of the site for glitch times (the rocket glitch and the 2 known shortcuts). We will not use these times for our site rankings. They will simply be charts of players glitch times and the glitch world records.

If you would like to submit times using any of these glitches, I've created a new mailing group.
http://gamesource.groups.yahoo.com/group/mkds_glitch/
email : mkds_glitch@yahoogroups.com

Here are the preliminary rules for where you may use the boosting glitch for regular times submissions. To clarify, these rules exist so that there is no ambiguity about what is and isn't a glitch time.

Prb races

F8C: No prb-racing is allowed.
DH: No prb-racing is allowed.
MC: Prb-racing may be used only on the sand inside the first turn. Prb-racing may not be used to go through the grass to the right of the first goomba, but after passing him to the left, slight grass clips on that straight are allowed if the prb is still in effect.
PG: No prb-racing is allowed. (I'm not sure if it's possible in PG)
MC1: Prb-racing may be used only on the sand to the left of the straight after the first turn (not on the turn at the end of that straight).
PC: Prb-racing may be used only on the grass inside the first turn.
LC GCN: No prb-racing is allowed.
DP1: Prb-racing may be used only on the grass before the bridge.
FS: Prb-racing may be used only on the snow inside the first left turn.
KB2: Prb-racing may be used only on the grass before reaching the water.
LC GBA: No prb-racing is allowed.
CI2: Prb-racing may be used only on the mud straight ahead from the start as you go through the gap in the wall.
SG: Prb-racing may be used only before the first rainbow colored ramp jump.
YC: Prb-racing may be used only before the shortcut.

If you would like more information about this glitch, please visit our message board.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays

Sully @ Saturday, December 24th [link]

Michael Liem did some nice work putting together this Combined Mario Kart Rankings Page for us. Go check it out. For the new members maybe this is a chance for you to see the roots of this site.

Glancing at the charts, our top-10 players without proof are #5 Vincent Zee, #6 Christoph Pijpelink, and #8 Miguel Rodriguez. Could you all make an effort this week to get some kind of proof? (EDIT: This was not meant as a threat to these players. I'd just like to encourage proof in general and its more important for our top players. There is no deadline I have made or anything of the sort.)

We've had a lot of action all through the ranks this week. #1 Michael Fried is still submitting PRs at a good pace and has managed to keep his AF score under 2 (1.6875) even with all this competition. Michael currently holds 36 WRs, which I think is his lowest total in over a month.

#2 Tristan Eyma joined us this week after competing at the french site since the release of the game. His times are very strong and he currently holds 7 world records. We'll look for him to challenge Fried in the future. I urge other French players to submit their times to our site also.

#3 Matt Flees was active all week and sadly saw a slight increase of 0.22 to his AF score despite his efforts. Matt holds both world records on Rainbow Road and the LC(GBA) lap record. His PRs gave him a full point lead on #4 Christopher McMullen, who was inactive.

#6 Christoph Pijpelink and #8 Miguel Rodriguez both made nice AF cuts, moving up the rankings.

It looks to me like everyone in the top 20 was active this week except for Christopher McMullen, Mike Hartjens, and Dave Phaneuf. With all that activity, only 5 of the 17 managed to make AF cuts!

#18 Arnaud Teil took 6.3 off his AF score to jump up into the top 20.

#19 David Taylor, our UK champion, cut 7.2 in AF and reached the top 20 again, nice job.

Other big movers were #25 Sami Cetin, #26 Sascha Brauninger, #36 Paul Del-Busso, #37 Scott Brehm, #41 Jerome Francois, and #50 Jeffrey Botula.

Other new WRs are:
#10 Lars Stelzig with 1:18.766 F8C and 32.377 TTC.
Scott Rogoff with 25.759 F8C (try to get a full set of times, Scott! smile

)
#44 Anders Magnusson with 1:39.442 and 32.340 LM.
#26 Sascha Brauninger with 1:40.639 TTC.
#30 Andrew Bengtsen with 14.194 KB2.
Albert Ferras with 1:53.939 and 37.366 BB.
Isai Alvarado with 23.336 SG.
Marco Nichele with 1:32.474 YC.

Any of you with WRs that dont have proof need to provide proof sometime this week, please. Also, Isai, is that Sky Garden time using the shortcut?

Happy karting everyone!

Here's 2 new random pages I added to the site:
World Record History
Site Activity History

A Word About Proof

Mark @ Monday, December 19th [link]

It's unfortunate that issues of proof and credibility arise (almost naturally) from the nature of online video game competitions. The two main goals of the Mario Kart Players' Page family of pages are 1) To establish a credible set of time trial rankings for all players and the fastest time trial records in the world for the Mario Kart series of games and 2) To establish an open, friendly, supportive community for all players to facilitate competition.

This site has been maintained solely by the work of volunteers since 1997 and I ask that everyone respect the work of those people and the countless hours they've dedicated to ensure that these great sites and this community of players exists. This includes being honest and exuding good sportsmanship in all aspects of competition. Do not submit fake times, do not withhold strats, do not hoard your times, do your best to cooperate with proof/validation protocol and just be nice and respectful in general. I ask that everyone take these words to heart.

-Mark Jones

Proof ...

Sully @ Monday, December 19th [link]

Ok, well the last day has been pretty crazy here. For those of you who dont know already, I've removed Serkan Honeine's times from the site. My reasons were:

1) His WRs were much different than any other karter. His times completely dominated records. The best example I think was 25.0xx on F8C flap when the 2nd place time was 26.3xx.
2) I set up a wifi match to serve as soft proof until he could get something more solid. Serkan, Michael Fried, and Josh Freund (our other times updater) played in wifi matches where Serkan and Michael would race without items and Josh would stay out of the way and make sure everything went ok. Serkan didn't display the skills necessary to get his world records. I've removed his times as a result, until he provides hard proof.
3) He told me later that it was not him playing, but a friend. He lied to me. That's another reason why his times aren't on our site.

I honestly hope that Serkan will provide hard evidence of his times (video of his PR runs) and prove me wrong. A major goal of this site is to represent the best players in the world accurately.

What happens next?
This situation was the first real proof issue that we've had. As a result, a lot of people have called for more proof from all of the top players. We all know video proof is tough to show for MKDS but that's what we're going to try for. I just glanced at the rankings and currently 6 of our top 10 players have proof of some kind. If you're close to the top and haven't given any sort of proof, try to fix that.

A few players have questioned Michael Fried specifically in the proof debate. Naturally its strange to see a player dominate the game so much. I invite those of you who are new to our site to visit our MK64 time trial site (see the links page) and look at Michael Fried's ranks there. Michael has a world record there with video proof and proof of a lot of his other scores across SMK, MK64, and MKDD. The MK64 site is an extremely developed records community and I'd say that 1 world record in MK64 is easily more impressive than 64 WRs at this stage of MKDS. That said, it'd be nice if Michael could give some more video proof of his PRs, or find someone to host the videos he's already made on a website so everyone can easily access them.

Play nice
Its very important to me that we keep this site as a place to submit records, share strategies, and chat openly. We dont like people who hide their strategies and they are much less respected than our members who are always willing to help. The top players have been doing pretty well with that so far I'd say. Thanks for helping everyone out, guys.

Time submissions
Just another about about time submissions to the mailing group. Please make sure you use the proper format for submissions. We automate the process of getting the times on the site as much as possible.
1) Please include your name in every post (exactly as its listed on the website, dont just do initials like Sean S)
2) If you include splits for your 3lap times, leave out the decimal point so our parser wont think it is a score to be added to the site. We dont really care if you include splits or not, unless you're submitting a world record, in which case its cool to have splits.
Good example : F8C 1:23.000 (21010, 21010, 200980)
Bad example : F8C 1:23.000 (21.010, 21.010, 20.980)
3) If you notice that you've made a mistake in your submission or we've entered a time wrong somehow, make a new yahoogroups post with the correct time and say something like "MISTAKE! MISTAKE!" and the old incorrect time so that it'll catch our eye.

Thanks for reading. Go hit some PRs now!

Serkan's back

Sully @ Sunday, December 18th [link]

Well, Serkan Honeine showed up again yesterday after a few weeks away from the site and posted 11 WRs, most of which are held by large margins. Can you show us some proof on the message board, Serkan?

#1 Michael Fried has continued to submit PRs but his pace has slowed slightly has his WR total has fallen to 44 (mostly because of Serkan).

#2 Christopher McMullen couldn't play online this week because his wifi was broken. As a result, he came back to the time trial site and submitted a bunch of PRs. He cut 0.5 off his AF since the last update (largest cut of anyone in the top 10) and built a nice lead in 2nd place. I've awarded him the Player of the Week Award for Week 2 of December. Nice job, Christopher.

Most of the players in the top 10 were at least a little active since the past update but only Christopher and #5 Martin Rudmarker made cuts in their AF scores. This is because there's a lot more pressure from karters outside the top 10 now.

#11 Andre Wachsmuth submitted some nice PRs and remains our German champion.

#14 Tronn Are Bye Johansen made the best cuts of any of the top players. He took 5.6 points off his AF score and climbed a few places in the rankings. Well done Tronn, its tough with all this competition.

#18 Francois Chu learned how to race and totally demolished his times. He took 32.9 points off his AF score!!

#21 Hans-Kristian Arntzen, #22 Arnaud Teil, #23 Matthew Mullen, #35 Niels Duijvesteijn, #36 Simon Birker, #39 Jacob McMillin, #43 Ryley Osmachenko, and #49 Paul Del-Busso were the other heavily active karters in the top 50.

We hit another milestone with 100 players having full sets of times now.

Some of the WRs hit by less prominent players were:
SR 35.571 and BC 40.806 by Vincent Zee
DKP 1:55.855 and 37.651 by Raphael Segas
CM 38.721 by Koen de Wilt

new threat?

Sully @ Wednesday, December 14th [link]

#1 Michael Fried was sitting on 61 world records today before Raphael Segas (Mario Kart Double Dash #1) joined the site and submitted 4 world records. Raphael hasn't submitted a full set of times yet, but he might be the one to finally knock Fried off the top pedestal.

#2 Matt Flees and #3 Christopher McMullen have both been submitting PRs frequently this week and are extremely closely matched at the moment. Click here to see the current matchup between the two of them. The score is tied 32-32 at the time of my writing this.

#4 Mike Hartjens has submitted a few PRs and distanced himself a bit from #5 Vincent Zee; he now leads the Dutch rivalry. Go see the rivalry page to check that out.

I asked if #7 Koen de Wilt would step up and contend with the other 3 top Dutch karters, and he has. I've added him to that rivalry now. Nice job, Koen.

Further down in the rankings, #16 Josh Friend, #17 Dave Taylor, #18 Tronn Are Bye Johansen, #25 Sami Cetin, and #27 Robert Szabo have submitted a ton of PRs recently and consequently made big jumps on the list.

Keep sending me PMs about your F8C 3lap WR predictions for January 1, 2007. Use 3 decimals places so there won't be so many ties.

World Records
#1 Michael Fried holds 56 world records right now, down a little bit from last week.
Raphael Segas recently joined and submitted 4 world records on Waluigi Pinball and DK Pass.
#16 Josh Freund hit his first world record today on N64 Frappe Snowland.
Scott Rogoff still owns both of the GCN Baby Park records and has pushed his flap time to 8.423, more than a tenth of a second better than #2. Wow!

1000 posts - 1:20? 1:19? 1:16?

Sully @ Sunday, December 11th [link]

Well we're over 1000 posts now in our mailing group for time submissions. Keep them coming. The most submissions to a Mario Kart yahoogroup in a month is 954 during June 2005 on the MKDD site, lets try to beat that! We have 697 in December so far. Looks like a sure thing.

#1 Michael Fried broke the Figure 8 Circuit 3lap record today. His time stands at 1:20.421 with laps of 26.616, 26.949, and 26.856. My question for all of you is, what do you think world record will be on January 1, 2007? Go to our message board to submit your guess. Send a PM to me (su11y) with your guess before January 1, 2006. Keep your guesses to yourselves until then.

Michael Fried's world record total stands at 58 right now. Scott Rogoff holds both records on Baby Park and Lars Stelzig submitted records for Bowser's Castle and SNES Mario Circuit 1. Albert Ferras still has the flap WR on his favorite course, N64 Banshee Boardwalk. Serkan Honeine still holds the oldest world record on the site, Yoshi Falls flap. I'd still like it if anyone knows what happened to Serkan and why he's been unavailable for the past 3 weeks. His world record will be erased eventually without proof or a revolutionary strategy.

#2 Matt Flees put some distance on Christopher McMullen and holds 16 2nd place times by my count.

I've created a rivalry between the top 3 Dutch Karters: #4 Vincent Zee, #6 Mike Hartjens ,and #7 Christoph Pijpelink. Go to the rivalry page to see the comparison between them. #8 Koen de Wilt, also Dutch, is a good distance behind now but could join this rivalry if he puts up some good PRs in the next few days.

#19 Josh Freund, one of our updaters, made a -9.8 cut to his AF score in the last day. No one else had better than a -3 cut. Nice job Josh.

Shortcut news and an update

Sully @ Friday, December 9th [link]

In the past few days, people have started to discover shortcuts in the game. There have been 2 found in Rainbow Road and 1 in Sky Garden. I have classified all 3 of these tricks as shortcuts. For those of you who have been on our sites for the other Mario Kart games, you know this means we will not allow you to submit times that use these tricks . You can see the discussion about these shortcuts on the message board and my reasoning process.

A few people had submitted times using the Sky Garden shortcut. I've since deleted the 2 obvious ones ( the times under 23.5 seconds). If any of you submitted times using the Sky Garden shortcut, could you please post on the message board or contact me somehow so I can remove the time from the website. Thank you.

Back to karting.

#1 Michael Fried has continued to protect his world records as best he can. He currently has 59 world records. A few people have been able to compete with him on some of the courses but it seems like no one else is dedicated enough (or has enough free time) to challenge him for the overall #1 position. I've awarded the Player of the Week award for the 1st week of December to Fried. I really, really wanted to give this award to someone else this week, but no one impressed me enough. Mike Hartjens, Christopher McMullen, and Matt Flees were close though.

There has been a lot of competition for the #2 spot. Matt Flees took #2 when he finally completed his set of 64 times. Since then, he and Christopher McMullen have submitted a good amount of PRs and McMullen holds #2 right now by a decent amount.

We have 120 members now and 64 of you have submitted full sets of times. Keep them coming!

There's 102 times for F8C 3lap now. Nicky Macktosh was the first karter to ever hold a time not in the top 100 for a course. Sorry Nicky! razz

Reminder

Sully @ Monday, December 5th [link]

Before the news, I just wanted to remind everyone about their time submissions.
We ask that you include your name, as it is written on the site, with every post on the yahoogroup. Read the "Join" section of the page for other tips about submissions to make it easier for us, please!

#1 Michael Fried has 62 world records now, which only Martin Rudmarker and Serkan Honeine standing in the way of his 64/64 total domination.

#3 Martin Rudmarker has been doing a lot of racing and has almost caught up to #2 Christopher McMullen. Martin should take the #2 spot by the next update.

#10 Mike Hartjens and #13 Koen de Wilt both joined recently and have already put up some great times, nice job on that!

We just hit 100 members on the site (102 at the moment), but we only have 49 members who have submitted a full set of 64 times. Get to work on that!

Where's Serkan?

Sully @ Sunday, December 4th [link]

#1 Michael Fried reached 63 world records yesterday and is still 0.4 away from beating Serkan Honeine's YF flap from more than a week ago. Does anyone know where Serkan is so he can give proof of this time or explain the strategy?

Since then, Fried's WR total has decreased to 60 because of Matt Flees and Sean Sullivan grabbing world records on Peach Circuit and Rainbow Road.

The closely contested 3rd place spot has been resolved. #3 Martin Rudmarker pulled away and has almost caught Christopher McMullen. #4 Andre Wachsmuth also submitted a lot of PRs and distanced himself from #5 Keith Babaxter.

#11 Peter Toch submitted some PRs saying his time in the top 10 wasn't over just yet. Sorry Peter, you'll have to do better than that to get back in the top 10.

Player of the Month

Sully @ Friday, December 2nd [link]

November is over now and I've awarded the first "Player of the Month" award to #1 Michael Fried.

For those who are new to the time trial community, these awards are not just handed out to the #1 player at the end of each week, month, quarter, year. The awards reflect consistent PRing throughout the period and significant cuts in AF, total times, etc. Michael Fried has been very impressive so far. Since the game was release on November 14th in the USA, there's been only 1 day when he hasn't submitted several PRs. He's managed to get his world record total back up to 60 now.

The other 4 world records are held by Josh Griffin, Albert Ferras, Christopher McMullen, and Serkan Honeine.

Christopher McMullen submitted another set of times to give himself #2 by a comfortable margin over Martin Rudmarker.

The 3rd position is very highly contested. Check out this page to see how close #3 Martin Rudmarker (AF = 8.08), #4 Dave Phaneuf (AF = 8.09), and #5 Keith Babaxter (AF = 8.11) are.

The site has been growing nicely for the past week. We have 67 times for Figure 8 Cicuit 3lap now. If there are any of you out there who are afraid to submit weak times, I encourage you to submit any times you get to fill out your records for all 32 courses. This site isn't just about #1, there's competition all the way up and down the rankings.