Greetings all.

There has been some contention around this dispute, which had some members feeling that it was not addressed appropriately.

I want to talk about it, and another item that relates so please bear with me...

The contention around the resolved dispute was that there was a belief that the whole point of the dispute's discussion was to adjust the track rules to somehow accommodate a MAME score performance which was accepted and apparently conformed to the rules as stated, but was assumed to deviate from all the other leaderboard entries.

The deviation became possible due to a software change where an earlier version of MAME defaulted to granting 1 life at start, and later versions of MAME defaulted to granting 3 lives at start. Since the TG rules that were created at the time (well before current TG ownership) did not specify number of lives allowed other than a default start assumption, this wound up allowing for an unforeseen competitive advantage for players submitting scores on that track using newer versions of MAME.

The new score in dispute utilized 3 lives, but all the scores on the leaderboard were pre-tgsap and were assumed to have used only 1 life, so ultimately the dispute was accepted and the score was removed from that leaderboard. A new leaderboard was created that allowed for 3 lives and the score ultimately found its way there.

The track itself was left unmodified at that time. However, it is the fact that the track was left unmodified that generated this kind of response form a community member:

Certainly I can understand that there can be frustration at times. We all can experience it. However, I am going to kindly ask the community to try to minimize this kind of unproductive expression toward TG staff in the future. To be clear, I am only highlighting this particular comment as an example of the kind of communication that is just not particularly helpful or desired in working toward solving problems productively. This single comment is by no means the only one that TG staff has had to experience over time from various parts of the community - and I am not trying to call out anyone specifically with the example.

The primary point is to help express that we are not here to take abuse or be disrespected by anyone. We have been working very hard for a long time to make TG the best it has ever been. Not all of TG staff is as thick-skinned as I am personally, and I am quite certain that the community would absolutely not appreciate being spoken to by TG staff in some of the ways that it has seen TG staff have to endure, so I'm hoping most members can understand the request for better conduct here.

As you know, TG does not want to foster or encourage a toxic culture - not toward our staff and not toward each other.

Let's all try to continue to keep it positive and productive as best we all can. TG has really been improving over these last few months in many ways! Let's keep going.

Back to the dispute item:

The track that was in question is:

https://www.twingalaxies.com/game/point-blank/mame/points-training-mode/page/1

And the reason that the rules were not modified at the time of dispute acceptance to specify 1-life only is because we wanted to absolutely confirm that all scores on the track were in fact played with 1 life only.

This required us to actually find all the associated INP files with every score on that leaderboard and watch them to physically verify the 1-life adherence.

We have confirmed, and adjusted the rules.

Since we currently do not have an easy way of adding INP files to pre-TGSAP scores, for the time being we have made available the INPs for all scores on that leaderboard in the track's discussion thread.

https://www.twingalaxies.com/game/point-blank/mame/points-training-mode#discussion

That's it. Thank you for your patience.