To who has time to look into this, I am requesting a cheat for the gauntlet games (only necessary for final revision, and G2) that will avoid food starvation, but still keeping the increasing difficulty (based on score).
To those who want to know how this works,
every 16,384 points, the game becomes more difficult. Monsters will generate faster, and slightly less food is given per "step". Different players (such as Valkyrie) get more food in general than others (Wizard gets the least), but the difficulty routines remain the same.
At about 150,000 points, a lot of food is missing, and food is almost completely gone at 250,000 points. (your overall score is divided by # of coins, divided by average score of all players playing).
There is a bug, however.
This has to do with some sort of binary value check, when "a LOT" of food is taken out. I don't have this exact formula, as I don't really know how the difficulty tables work. But, at 16,384x128---2.1 million points (notice the bit value "128" here, which is multiplied by 16,384), the game suddenly flips, from complete, total starvation, into giving you **ALL** the food possible for that particular level. The monster generation speed is still at the maximum level though. At 4.2 million (16,384x256--obviously, 256 is an overflow after 255, for those who know binary), the game difficulty completely resets back to as if your score were "0". That includes monster generation, food allocation, everything, then the cycle begins anew. (so basically, at 4.4 million, you will be starved again, and then be given all the food at roughly 6.3 million).
Normally, to play on one credit for infinite time, you need to actually insert 1 quarter into the other 3 players and have them join in when you are being starved for the first time, so you can boost your score up to 2.1 million, shooting 30 point (x8) ghosts. (check my Gauntlet 2 FAQ on GAMEFAQS for more on this).
What I would like to see is a cheat, that can "freeze" the food allocation check, to trick it into thinking that your score is at exactly 16,384x128, However, doing this as a GENERAL score toggle/freeze will not be desirable ! Because, this would make the monsters generate at full speed immediately (imagine doing this on the very first level!). This could be done as a beta cheat, until ONLY the section that deals with food starvation. If this is done (preliminary), it's important to use 16x384 * 128 as the cheat compare value, as using "0" would cause the game to be forever too easy, and therefore boring (remember, monster generation is affected by the score, too).
What is needed, is clearly a way to fool the food starvation check (and ONLY the food starvation check) into thinking that your score is 16,384 * 128, and not both the starvation, and the monster generation/difficulty check (that one should be left alone in any final cheat addition).
Also, keep in mind, that internally, the game DIVIDES YOUR SCORE, BY THE # OF COINS YOU HAVE INSERTED, divided by the # of players present (actually this gets complicated when others are playing...I actually think the COMBINED score of all the players is divided by the # of players playing, and THAT is divided by the # of total coins each player inserted.
Anyone want to tackle such a thing? Would make a wonderful cheat.
Remember, though ,what I said about leaving the monster difficulty score check alone, (or if anything, freezing the entire score check at 16x384 * 128 until only a food starvation check occurs.
I once had the actual EXACT machine code for this check (from the Gauntlet hacker's page....until the sysop realized I didnt own the real board, --he HATES people who don't own the game, even though I was a beta tester for MGE back then..), but I don't have it anymore
