I'm a little teapot. Famous words, and unbeknownst to most they were first heard booming out of Isaac Asimov's great vocal strands after he'd just put crack in his tea instead of sugar. He woke up the next day with a thumping headache and seven sheets of paper with the synopsis of every episode of "League of Gentlemen" written down in French.

Actually, that's probably a lie. I just mis-spelt "nitebycandlelite".

Allow me to introduce you to our merry bunch of halfwits, more commonly known as the Lleague Admin. We're here to make the Lleague itself run smoothly - update score tables, do the turnarounds at the end of the week, keep Llamascores updated, etc... Unfortunately it very rarely goes to plan. Either way:

Elizian is the original (and best) score co-ordinator. Back when we only had one division, it was he that took care of everything regarding scores and updates and things like that. Nowadays he deals with Flossie Points, updating flocks and pedantry.
Muttley is a character from Wacky Races, and serves no other purpose.
nitebycandlelite is... me. I write this drivel, and also sloppily co-ordinate scores and help with turnarounds and things like that. It's my job at the end of a week to look through everything Elizian's done and pick errors out.

ok.

Muttley runs Llamascores, which is the definitive stats website for all things Llamasoft Lleague-shaped. He also looks after the Random Game Selector by keeping it wrapped up in a fluffy blanket and periodically feeding it peanuts. What most people don't know is that the Random Game Selector is actually a squirrel called Nigel, and Muttley lays a piece of A4 paper on the floor for each game that is up for nomination each week. The chosen game is the first one that Nigel starts to stockpile nuts on. [not true]

And now for some things.

• The Llamasoft Lleague is an informal games competition, between members of YakYak.
• There are no prizes; there is no entry fee; it's all just for fun. And smugness.
• Can't forget the smugness.

What games do you play?

For the first Lleague season, we played classic arcade games, emulated in MAME. For the second season and beyond, we have decided to branch out into any system that is easily emulated. There has been talk of a "best of the Lleague" competition at some point - this is currently under discussion and not happening just yet.

Who chooses the games you play?

The players do! Each player is entitled to choose and post one game they'd like to play when they first join the Lleague, or at the start of a season. At the end of every season, the list is cleared, and everyone is entitled to nominate one game again - it can be one that has already been nominated, either by yourself or somebody else, or it can be a previously un-nominated one. The only rules for nomination are : No games that have already been played in the Lleague, and no games that are not easily emulated on the "big three" platforms (see below).

Muttley maintains a big list of the games that people have suggested, and using a random-generator wotsit in a well-known spreadsheet package, or cleverly (not) written programs in Blitz Basic, or a squirrel, he picks each week's game.

New in Season 10: For your chosen game to be eligible for the week's draw, you must have participated in the previous week's game. If you do not participate your game will be left out of the pot for that week; if you participate in that week then your game will be re-instated to the pot for the following week's draw.

How long do you play for?

Each game is played for a week, starting on Sundays at 9.30pm, and finishes at 9.30pm on the following Sunday. We play in 10-week "seasons", with a one-or-two week gap in between each season. The length of break depends purely on how busy the Lleague Admin are with other commitments and whether we could do with another week off or not...

Did someone mention a FAQ? Where is it?

The FAQ is always smack at the top of the "We Are... The Lleague!" forum. Unless there's another announcement made, that is. In which case it'll be *nearly* smack-at-the-top. Hmph.

What ROMsets do you use?

Whichever one is chosen... All the files you need will always be available on Muttley's site, and clear indication will be given. They'll be stated by myself, via the wonderful futuristic technology of hyperlinks, in the first post of each game thread.

I can't play this game, it's uncontrollable. It was originally played with a special controlling mechanism, and I just can't replicate that. Do we still have to play?

Well, it depends. Your first port of call would be to try and adjust your controller settings, or even maybe your controller itself - for instance, ever tried playing Arkanoid with the keyboard? Well, precisely.

After you've done that, if the game is now rendered fairly playable then it's time to step out and knock out some world-beating scores. However, if you've changed through all your available devices and are still having no luck, then it's time to complain.

"How do you complain?", I hear you cry. Well! All you need to do is post a sarcastic message in the scores thread (note : doesn't actually have to be sarcastic) and one of the Moderators will do their best to sort out the query in any way possible.

How are you Mod-people going to make sure that we don't get any of these games that may be unplayable?

We do try. Unfortunately, none of us own a mac - I believe Muttley owns a Linux box, but I can't be sure. Either way, we try all games that are nominated quickly to make sure that they're not taking the piss, but we still have problems - We've had to abort a game before due to unplayability, this resulted in a new game being chosen from the pool and that was played instead. However, by taking heed of the following question, you (yes, you) can help us avoid this...

How can I avoid nominating these games then?

The best thing to do is to try and make sure that if the game once had an obscure control system, make sure it is easily emulated by using the keys, a mouse, a gamepad or a joystick. Ideally, two forms of control would be better.

I've never heard of this game!

Check the first post. There should be some information somewhere there, either in the form of pictures, writings or links.

Can I nominate King Of Fighters 2001 / Metal Slug 4 / [insert extremely large ROMfile name here]?

This was previously outlawed, but now it's, er, inlawed? No. Um.

The answer is yes. Yes you can. For those poor souls who are still using a 56K connection, we offer a service in which we will burn a CD with all the season's nominated ROMs for anyone interested. However, you have to ask for it!

To give this meaningless wiffle some context - large ROMfiles can be nominated at the start of a season, but not midway through the season. If it's decided that a ROM is sufficiently large enough to warrant a CD being made for it, we'll make the CDs and anyone who's still using a modem (poor sods) can have one, free of charge.

The reason we ask for you not to nominate games with large ROMfiles midway through a season is that there's no feasible way for us to get CDs out for the 56k users. In this instance, we ask you all to only nominate ROMs which are 5mb or less in size. Ta.

CD, huh? How'd I get one of those, then?

Ask us. It's worth posting a thread in the Lleague forum asking for a CD - one of us will get your details and your address and send you lots of junk mail. And the CD.

I don't want to play any of these games. Is there any way around it?

Unfortunately not. If you don't want to play any of the games, then it's just bad luck, either you don't take part or you try and get points in the spirit of the Lleague. The Lleague isn't just a way of playing the games that you're already good at, it's also a way of discovering new games that you may never have played.

Can I post my score from a while back? It's ten times better than anything I can do now...

Nah. You'll need to be actually playing the games in the time specified for the competition. By all means practice the next week's games, but when the competition starts you will have to come up with the score from scratch.

Can I post the score from my practice session last week?

Nope!

OK, ok, I've heard enough. I wanna play! How do I go about joining?

There's no official joinage procedure as of yet, you need to be a member of the Llamasoft forum (obviously), but apart from that you just need to take a screenshot of your score (F12 in MAME, and as for other emulators: [url=http://www.llamascores.org/faq-emulation.htm]Clicky[/url]) and attach it to your post in the appropriate thread. If you win a game in MAME (or any other emulator that has the capability) you will be expected to provide a recording of your game to give play / strategy tips to the other Llamasofties. Recordings are not strictly necessary but it's just a nice thing to do.

What do we call the screenshots?

Fred.

GUFFAW!

Ok, seriously. Muttley, the man of... I dunno, can't think of anything that rhymes, so "That guy with the long hair who does the site... No, he's not a hippy" says:

Screenshot and Replay attachment filenames should be in the following format: GameName-Score-PlayerName. So if Muttley scored a measly 100 points on Time Pilot, the filename would be: TimePilot-100-Muttley.png and the recording would be: TimePilot-100-Muttley.zip.

As you can see from this, Muttley is really, really crap at Time Pilot.

We'll put a reminder of this in the threads every now and then. Why do we want the filenames like this? Basically, it makes Muttley's life easier for when he's updating Llamascores.

I use LINUX / A Mac... will I still be able to play?

Of course, we only choose emulators that can be emulated fairly on all three "major" platforms.

Because I'm new, do I get any advantage over the existing members?

Nice try, but no. All games are played at factory settings, which will be stated in the first post in the appropriate thread. The info from that there first post will also have details of any unfair advantages that you're not allowed to use too, under the "special conditions" heading. Llamascores will also give specific details of the game settings and dip switches to be used.

I've got no score to post right now, but I can't see anyone else's scores! How come?

You're most probably not logged in. If logging in doesn't solve your problem, send a PM to Gribbles, Muttley or RiK and they'll try and sort your problems out. In all fairness, you should just check the first post anyway, as that'll have the high-score table on.

In the thread, people keep mentioning "Recordings". What's a Recording?

A recording is a feature in some emulators that can be used to... well, "record" their game, in effect. It makes a record (god, not that word again) of the key/buttonpresses and saves them to a file, which other users can then "play back". Effectively, you get to see other people's games again. Or even, your own!

That sounds cool, but how do I do it?

See the appropriate platform FAQ. You can find this on Llamascores, on this here page.

New for Season 10: The naming of recordings has always been done in a similar way to screenshots, but for MAME-recorded, uh, recordings, you need to stick the version of MAME you're using on the end - for instance, freddibnahsteamrollerchallenge-100-nitebycandlelite-0.84.zip. Might look a bit long-winded but saves everyone time in the long run.

I've submitted my score now but some fuc^h^h^h someone else just posted a higher score! Can I try to beat them?

Of course, beating other people is a big feature of the Lleague (!) You can post as many scores as you like, even if you're in the lead.

I THINK I've submitted a higher score than them, but there's other people posting scores too, and I'm not sure what position I'm in at the moment. Is there any way I can check?

Yep, thanks to us! Aren't we great. We try and update the scores at least once daily, although the sad truth is that they may get twiddled three times a day. Or more! Depending if we've got anything better to do or not.

Be nice now... but if you do spot something that doesn't look right, please let us know.

After I scored 1,000,000 the counter reset to a much less impressive 0! Will I still be able to claim my score?

Probably, because there will usually be some other indication of your excellence, like a level number. Better still, if you made a recording, someone (Thanks, guys! Elizian) can replay it.

I just finished the whole game! Surely I must get the Gold Medal for that?

Not necessarily. It is still the highest score that gets the points, so make sure that no-one else finished it with a better total. (Some games, e.g. Rod-Land, let you play on if you use another credit but, like "Continue?"s, the Lleague operates a strict one credit, one score rule.)

Someone posted a really high score just before the competition ended and beat everyone... Is that allowed?

Well, it depends. If they just got the score, then yeah, of course it is! But if it was their first posting, then most likely they're "sniping" and we don't like that. Going back to earlier, the Lleague's supposed to be fun, and in that old phrase... "It don't matter whether you win or lose, it's the taking part that counts".

My computer broke before the end of the competition, and I had a better score than my previous. Is it still valid?

Well, the best thing to do is to tell a fellow Llamasoftie PRIOR to the competition ending your exact score, and they'll relay it to us mods. That way, when the picture comes through we'll be able to verify it, and switch the placings accordingly. So, to cut it short, yes it is still valid but only with appropriate measures first.

The Forum broke before the end of the competition, and I had a better score than my previous. Is it still valid?

Wow. You really couldn't be bothered to type a differently-worded question, eh? The answer is yes, but it has to be e-mailed to one of us three mods before the competition ends. Our e-mail addresses are:

me"at"nitebycandlelite"dot"co"dot"uk
ian"at"elizian"dot"co"dot"uk
muttley"at"muttleyville"dot"org

But no-one'll know if I cheat.

Correct. The thing is, the Lleague's a bit of fun between YakYak members - we all trust each other to this extent, and we expect you to be the same... If we ever did find out you'd been cheating, we may have to throw stuff at you. Like eggs. Oh, and ban you from the Lleague. And possibly the forum! Be warned.

OK, OK. No cheating. My Joypad has Autofire though... Can I use that?

No, as the original arcade machines, computers and consoles never had autofire functions! It'd give you a horrendous advantage over the other competitors if you did, and we wish to maintain a level playing field for everyone.

The point has also been raised that on many home computer games, many people had (and used) autofire joysticks. However - still no. If the game doesn't have it programmed in, you can't use it. Any problems, see me (unless you're Rik).

What about the bug in Game X that makes your character do an Irish Jig whilst increasing your points by 100,000 each time? Can I do that?

Now, whilst that'd be an incredibly cool bug to exploit, it's not allowed. No exploitation whatsoever, and especially not if it's for unfair gain.

OK, but what about if I stay on the first level and shoot all the monkeys that'll slowly but surely give me the highest score?

Points whoring is also not allowed. It's not an accurate representation of your skill. Admittedly, during the course of a game, a certain amount of points whoring may be allowed, and also if the stage you are whoring gets increasingly more difficult. However, if the difficulty stays the same, excess whoring is a nono.

Excess may require a recording to be made at the Moderators' discretion for judgement.

Okay, so I was messing around and found a cheesy way to points whore in a game. Can you guys just deduct the unfair part of the score, or should I start over?

You should start a new game, and here's the reason: your name, score, screenshot, and recording (if you have one) are uploaded to the Llama-Scores website, viewable months or years from now, and we don't want to keep getting questions about a mismatch a decade from now. In the interest of keeping the archive accurate, we'd greatly appreciate it if the score of your screenshot matched the final score of your game (and, of course, the skill of your play - see previous question), so if you find yourself leeching, do not submit the score of that game - we cannot accept it. Guest-written by Zotmeister

It's after the time for the competition to end, but the thread is still open. Can I carry on posting in it?

Yep... the thread will remain open. No scores will be acknowledged after 9:30pm, but the thread is open for discussion on the game. Muttley keeps a list of all scores submitted after a game's time in the Lleague has expired. It won't get you any more points, but you'll look far cooler on Llamascores, and the big kids won't beat you up and call you fatty as much.

The competition's finished now, and we're moving onto another game. I heard you say that the players pick the games, and I want to pick one... how would I go about that?

Simple - each season we create a thread for game nominations. Find it, and state your chosen game that you wish to play. It can be for any easily-emulated system. The reason we have restricted the picking to one per person is because in the first season, the list grew quite large after some people picked many games, meaning that people had less chance to play what games they wanted. We initially reduced the pickings to two games each, and games were chosen in a three-game poll each week, but this system has now been abandoned for a no-poll, one-per-week strategy.

The thread for Season 11 can be found here.

How long does the Lleague last for?

The Lleague lasts for 10 weeks a pop, with virtual rosettes for certain-placed members. Back in the day (think seasons 0-3), we had about 12-16 regular players in the Lleague. Come season 4, everyone decided that they liked us, and started playing... overall, we've had loads of individual players in the Lleague, and this season saw 42 players participating in the first game.

Anyway, back then there was only one division: That was, for all intents and purposes, "The Lleague". I don't think anybody expected it to swell to the proportions it has now, to the point where we once had three flocks (not divisions, I'll have you know): Flossie's Flock, Shaggy's Flock and Ginger's Flock.

We're back to one now, as the flocks system didn't work too well - there were too many absentees in the higher flocks, thus making the whole thing a bit of a waste of time. We've amended the scoring a bit though, to give everyone more of a chance...

[bad joke removed involving the replacement of the word "Fuck" with "Flock"]

It's better than being sponsored by Carling.

I'm going on holiday soon. Will I be disqualified from the Lleague?

Nah, of course not. You just won't get any points for any games you miss.

Where can I check previous Scores?

Llamascores has details of all previous scores from the Lleague, as well as a few one-off games played before the Lleague was conceived. Alongside these are the current overall standings. You can also submit scores (with screenshots) to Muttley for inclusion in the High-Score tables on his site, although no points will be awarded for successful placings.

Where does Yak come in to all this?

He chooses the 10th game of every season, instead of whatever we do for the other weeks. It won't necessarily be on any of the lists, it's totally his choice. Even he has to adhere to the rules of game choosage though...

OK, I suck. Have I got any points?

It depends how much you suck. In season 0, we used the Grand Pricks method of scoring, but as the Lleague grew, we decided that more points were needed, and so we devised a new scoring system. It works on a percentage basis.

I'm great at games (ha!). I've scored 1,000 on Giraffe Surprising. I'm top of the table, so I get 100.00 points to begin with. Muttley scores a respectable (!) 560, and so gets 56.00 points. Elizian narrowly misses Muttley's score and scores 525, earning him 52.50 points. The two decimal places are primarily there to avoid ties. However...

It's the end of the season, and there's a tie for xth place! Who gets it?

If a tie occurs, the placing is decided by the amount of wins each player has. (This information is on Llamascores, too) If a tie happens here too, then the amount of 2nd places the combatants have obtained decides that. If they're still tied, the 3rd places will ring true. We just keep on going down, counting placings, until we split the tie.

I've been right through all these questions TWICE/THRICE/ELEVENTY BILLION TIMES and I'm still none the wiser. How do I ?

If you have a question which isn't answered here, follow this link and post your enquiry there. Someone from the moderating team will find it and try to get an answer for you. Then the FAQ will be updated and you will have made your very own mark on the Lleague. You whinging bastard.