My wife has grown somewhat addicted to this version of Mah-Jongg on Nabisco’s website:
http://www.nabiscoworld.com/games/nw_shock_nwmj.htm
The first thing that pops up is a screen asking if you want to download the current version of the Hyperload files for this game. I aways click on “no.” I do not know what these files are for, but the game works just fine without them.
You can then chose a “theme,” a board layout and a tile set by clicking on the appropriate item conitnuously until the one you want pops up. I don’t think it matters which theme or tile set you pick, but I believe the board needs to be the default one, as it alone says “High Score Contest.” The theme only affects the background. We prefer the normal “chinese character” tile set as the cookies or fortune cookies tend to be distracting. Then hit “start” to begin the game.
As soon as the game begins a timing counter starts up and counts upwards as long as you are playing the game, adding to the time. This affects your score. You click two of the same numbered tile in succession to remove them from the board. If you can manage to remove two sets of the same tile in succession (in other words, click four tiles of the same exact number in a row) you gat a bonus subtracted from your score. If you run out of possible moves, an option pops up allowing you to “shuffle” the remaining tiles so you can continue.
When you have finished taking off the last tiles, click on “Click for Score.” The final score is your total time MINUS the bonuses PLUS a penalty for each time you had to shuffle the tiles.
You can then see how your score matched against everyone else’s. To do this you hit the “quit/submit” button in the very bottom right corner of the gameboard. You must be “logged in” to have your score compared, so at this point you must log in or register (it’s free, of course). To register, you must enter your birthdate, then a screenname, password and email address. Other personal information is optional.
OK, now that I’ve explained the game, here’s my question:
Once you’ve entered/submitted your score, it shows a screen with the leader board. My wife, by playing very well, has gotten down to a score of maybe 300 when she has done extremely well. But there are always a bunch of people on the leader board WITH SCORES OF ONE.
How do they do this?
It’ apparent to me that somehow they can get bonuses that exceed their time-based score somehow, and the game will not register a zero or negative number. But how do they do this?
By reading the rules, you can see that you get additional bonus points by getting four “animated” tiled in a row (some tiles when removed have an animation, like the birds or the leafs). But we don’t see how you can possibly get that good a score.
Unless you are cheating, that is.
Is there a way to “slow down” or turn off the timing mechanism the games relys on (I assume it uses the computer’s internal clock) to get a really really low time-based score? Is there another way to “cheat” at this game?
There are no prizes or anything, and we are not interested in cheating ourselves, but we would really like to know how these other players are getting scores of 1.
Any suggestions or ideas? Do any dopers actually play this gane?
My wife thanks you for any info or suggestions you would like to share.