thanks mr satis.
wise words.
i managed to briefly come out of my itbox aversion and patiently worked out how to play it properly resulting in wins of up to £4!!!
not much but an absolute fortune by normal itbox standards.
i shall persevere.
caveman capers (or whatever it is called)
One feature this game has in common with some older, better games is that winning the money isn't linear, as opposed to say Monopoly Deluxe where you (presumably) have to keep answering a roughly similar number of questions for each £1 increment, although of course to do that you have to live in some strange parallel universe of infinite knowledge and infinite patience!
On Caveman Capers on the other hand, as with Millionaire, you answer quite a lot of questions for no reward and then once you hit the £1 virtually each question after that bumps up the prize, as long as the increments are relatively close together and you have the knack of hitting the shots. Going from £4 to £20 will therefore be much quicker than getting to £4 in the first place, although to be fair the questions do start to get noticeably harder around then and I've not yet held my nerve myself and guessed my way to the Jackpot.
On Caveman Capers on the other hand, as with Millionaire, you answer quite a lot of questions for no reward and then once you hit the £1 virtually each question after that bumps up the prize, as long as the increments are relatively close together and you have the knack of hitting the shots. Going from £4 to £20 will therefore be much quicker than getting to £4 in the first place, although to be fair the questions do start to get noticeably harder around then and I've not yet held my nerve myself and guessed my way to the Jackpot.
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Matt Vinyl
- Senior Member
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- Joined: Wed May 11, 2005 6:56 pm
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I guess that'd be known as an 'exponetial prize structure'! 
I do prefer games of this manner!
Still not confirmed that high score I saw for this. Hopefully will be able to check this Friday. It is certainly turning into a popular game at my local Bowling Alley!
I do prefer games of this manner!
Still not confirmed that high score I saw for this. Hopefully will be able to check this Friday. It is certainly turning into a popular game at my local Bowling Alley!
"And do you ever contradict yourself, Minister?" "Well, yes and no..."
I'm not sure what you mean by structure, but the way it seems to work is that 'randomly' you are offered between say 1 and 4 potential bonuses per game, depending on how long the game lasts, and each is conditional on the next shot being longer than a given points total - again these totals appear to be 'random'.
The bonuses I've seen are:
Free Shot
Pass
Reveal Answer
Extra Life
Cash Prize (I was given £2 last night)
I find Extra Life most useful.
The other nice feature is the ability to collect your money at any stage. Naturally you are tempted to go for some questions later on to boost your prize but if are really stuck and are happy with the prize, it's useful to be able to collect - a feature this game has in common with the mighty Millionaire. Of course, as with Millionaire you do have to consider whether collecting say £3 is going to make the next go considerably harder, hence whether gambling a few times on dodgy questions will eventually get you to a much bigger prize.
Still, isn't it nice to be talking about a game where winning at all and being able to gamble for bigger prizes are realistic issues and where the skill element of the game is fair and genuine? Let's hope they bring on more like this!
The bonuses I've seen are:
Free Shot
Pass
Reveal Answer
Extra Life
Cash Prize (I was given £2 last night)
I find Extra Life most useful.
The other nice feature is the ability to collect your money at any stage. Naturally you are tempted to go for some questions later on to boost your prize but if are really stuck and are happy with the prize, it's useful to be able to collect - a feature this game has in common with the mighty Millionaire. Of course, as with Millionaire you do have to consider whether collecting say £3 is going to make the next go considerably harder, hence whether gambling a few times on dodgy questions will eventually get you to a much bigger prize.
Still, isn't it nice to be talking about a game where winning at all and being able to gamble for bigger prizes are realistic issues and where the skill element of the game is fair and genuine? Let's hope they bring on more like this!
i really couldn't agree more.
as far as the bonuses are concerned i've had a bonus after, say,my 3rd and then 8th shots but in other games nothing til about my 9th shot and it's not because it wasn't wanting to pay.it does appear to be really random though if i may add intriguingly things are rarely 'random'on these things as i'm sure everyone is well aware.
one other thought(i'm maybe taking things too far here!)but has anyone noticed if there's a discerible pattern as to the q categories and could you thus tailor your shot to attain or indeed avoid certain subjects?
once again well done to the makers of this game if they read such forums as this.
as far as the bonuses are concerned i've had a bonus after, say,my 3rd and then 8th shots but in other games nothing til about my 9th shot and it's not because it wasn't wanting to pay.it does appear to be really random though if i may add intriguingly things are rarely 'random'on these things as i'm sure everyone is well aware.
one other thought(i'm maybe taking things too far here!)but has anyone noticed if there's a discerible pattern as to the q categories and could you thus tailor your shot to attain or indeed avoid certain subjects?
once again well done to the makers of this game if they read such forums as this.
I finally found this last night on a machine worth playing. £1 down at 1200 points, so it was well worth a go. I also got the high throw score on the machine 
(another of those 206.somethings). Managed to win £5 out of it, and it gave me an extra life with a bonus shot over 180.
My £5 question was 'which of these UK cities is furthest west'
a) Norwich
b) Newcastle-upon-tyne
c) Northampton
Easy money. I'd already got 1 answer wrong before, so i ran with my £5. Added to my £15 made off the extreme, a good 20 minutes work!
Matt
(another of those 206.somethings). Managed to win £5 out of it, and it gave me an extra life with a bonus shot over 180.My £5 question was 'which of these UK cities is furthest west'
a) Norwich
b) Newcastle-upon-tyne
c) Northampton
Easy money. I'd already got 1 answer wrong before, so i ran with my £5. Added to my £15 made off the extreme, a good 20 minutes work!
Matt
"Sixty percent of the time, it works, every time!"
I still haven't seen or achieved anything above 207.01 and 206.xx seems the realistic maximum so those bonus offers of above that are probably taking the proverbial, unless there is some little trick that none of us have yet discovered to boost the length of your shots. They would of course have had to draw in the background for shots above this sort of length and maybe that would have taken them over their development budget!grecian wrote:I was asked to get 208.xx to get a bonus t'other day! Is this possible??!
To be fair, that's not really what the scoreboard is displaying. You get onto the scoreboard if the one best shot from your completed game is in the Top 10 shots for that machine. You could have therefore got one 'lucky' 206.xx in the game and had the rest of the shots varying as you say between 100 and 200. If the same initials appear several times on the same scoreboard (mine are 'EFC'), that simply means the person involved has played the game many times and has managed to get a long shot in several of those games. Over time I would expect all the scoreboards to have a list of ten 206.xx shots, with pubs where there is not much passing trade having lots of the same initials showing.grecian wrote:I must say I'm impressed at scoreboards which suggest some players are able to get consistent 200+ throws. I vary absolutely randomly between about 100 and 200, which just goes to show I have no hand-eye co-ordination, as I've always known.
Interestingly of course, the state of the scoreboard is not really an indicator of whether a game has been 'emptied' or not - it's quite common to get an ordinary punter/regular who has the skill to get onto the scoreboard several times but who can only answer a few of the questions. A good rule of thumb here, comparable to the old Millionaire 'settings', seems to be:
1000-1200 for £1 - well worth playing
1200-1600 for £1 - still worth giving it a go
1600-2000 for £1 - it's going to be tricky to win much
2000+ for £1 - for recreation only
Good point, Nil Satis - I hadn't thought that through properly. I'd still say though that I probably only get a 200+ throw every 5 or 6 games I play. Of course, someone with 10 scoreboard scores might also have played 50 or 60 games to obtain those, but had they played e.g. only 10 or 15, then I'd be impressed.
I agree the prize ladder is the key determinant of whether CC's worth playing, as it is with many games.
I agree the prize ladder is the key determinant of whether CC's worth playing, as it is with many games.
Ah, but there is one key reason why Caveman Capers is different (and better) than say Monopoly or Cluedo, namely that it always shows you the prize structure, and therefore exactly how many points you need, on the 'skeleton' at the top of the screen. If you really played this a lot *, and got to know a lot of the answers, and if you really practised the shots *, so that you were averaging say 170 points per shot, you would then have a pretty good idea at the start of each game how many questions that game would need. The longest skeleton I've seen so far is around 5600 points, which in that scenario would be circa 33 questions needed.
While spoilers will no doubt kick in and the game will of course reserve the right to continue to extend the length of the skeleton it someone does win regularly, at least you can always see what you are up against. This for me is the frustration of games like Monopoly - you have no idea of the prize structure and as you are not shown it you have no idea if the machine can adjust it 'on the fly' if it realises that someone is much better than average. Similarly annoying was classic Cluedo, which had no concept of a prize structure and could (as we all know) keep you moving round the board until the pub's electricity got cut off or the world ended, whichever came sooner...
* PS Never forget - hard work and practice are 90% of the struggle!
While spoilers will no doubt kick in and the game will of course reserve the right to continue to extend the length of the skeleton it someone does win regularly, at least you can always see what you are up against. This for me is the frustration of games like Monopoly - you have no idea of the prize structure and as you are not shown it you have no idea if the machine can adjust it 'on the fly' if it realises that someone is much better than average. Similarly annoying was classic Cluedo, which had no concept of a prize structure and could (as we all know) keep you moving round the board until the pub's electricity got cut off or the world ended, whichever came sooner...
* PS Never forget - hard work and practice are 90% of the struggle!