>The search space of possible Donkey Kong games, while finite, is almost unfathomably large...I imagine this would rack up scores far higher than any human realistically could--perhaps 2,000,000 or more.
Do you really think so? That they are still as far as only about 50% of a potential maximum? Personally I would IMAGINE (I can only imagine since I've never watched a record setting DK and it's techniques, or observed their loss-of-opportunity moments despite setting a record) that the top players are already maximizing every potential opportunity to control and group barrels, maximizing hammer-use and taking advantage of known exploits to achieve all they can... taking any risk necessary to achieve a top score. It's not like they are avoiding risk since the consequence is simply a restart. Unlike pacman, which has a defined maximum score... dk has SOME randomness to it due to barrel behavior and grouping... but still... at some point there is a maximum number of barrels in the time allotted... a maximum number of opportunities to group the barrels... and a maximum amount of time and levels. To come up with a theoretical maximum would be a matter of counting how many barrels are possible in the time on each level... assume the maximum score is produced by every barrel, and derive a theoritical maximum from that. Someone here must care enough about DK to crunch that basic formula out. ![](//www.mameworld.info/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/whistling2.gif)
You may be right... but seems to me, they are already approaching that asymtotic maximum potential score.
Edited by Gatinho (09/21/10 05:40 AM)
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