Pandora Gaming League

[skeezix]

Theres really several competing ideas; theres per machine type comletition for tbose who love that machine; theres genre (shooters etc); theres popularity vote across machines, meaning mostly nes snes and genesis. Then theres leader nazi which imho is the best - when you have a good gamepi king nazi - he can spread across machines and encourage people to try machines theyre not used to - as a Canadian ive barely ever seen speccie, but grew up on c64. So id like to see a nazi throw up good game of the week with even a 'how to start it' guide for those who have no clue on the taget machine

But maybe the target audienxe only wants snes genesis nes here so other platcorms would just kill the idea

So first - figure out what sort of systems our folks care about

Jeffphone

 

[milkshake]

lol were you asleep when you wrote that post some of it is unreadable

 

[Prometheus]

Jeff's on his phone, as his sign-off indicates.

 

[SomeGuy99]

Getting together, playing and discussing retro games adds so much to the experience I feel.

Last night I was playing Dr Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine with some friends... not a game I particularly got into till I started kicking human arse.

 

[Exophase]

Getting together, playing and discussing retro games adds so much to the experience I feel.

Last night I was playing Dr Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine with some friends... not a game I particularly got into till I started kicking human arse.

This is why I think netplay is going to eventually be a hot feature for Pandora. I hope lots of major emulators end up getting it.

 

[milkshake]

[This is why I think netplay is going to eventually be a hot feature for Pandora. I hope lots of major emulators end up getting it.

netplay...do you think it will be a new API by somone in the community or a ported one? or maybe even use kaillera? or something similar allthough i reckon creating one from scratch for the pandora would be better

 

[vadsamoht]

Getting together, playing and discussing retro games adds so much to the experience I feel.

Last night I was playing Dr Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine with some friends... not a game I particularly got into till I started kicking human arse.

This is why I think netplay is going to eventually be a hot feature for Pandora. I hope lots of major emulators end up getting it.

Unfortunately nobody seems to be working on it though. I offered to buy the rights and source for Kaillera some time ago, but the asking price was way too high for me to fund.

 

[milkshake]

Unfortunately nobody seems to be working on it though. I offered to buy the rights and source for Kaillera some time ago, but the asking price was way too high for me to fund.

really? you attempted to buy the rights to Kaillera? wow what made u wanna do that? i heard that nobody is working on it either.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaillera

 

[vadsamoht]

Unfortunately nobody seems to be working on it though. I offered to buy the rights and source for Kaillera some time ago, but the asking price was way too high for me to fund.

really? you attempted to buy the rights to Kaillera? wow what made u wanna do that? i heard that nobody is working on it either.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaillera

The reason I wanted to buy it was to port it to Pandora, and then a month or so later open up the source. Mr. Hugi stated that he `has plans' to update when I offered to buy it, but seeing as there hasn't been an update sonce '03, i doubt it. The forums are also reduced to spam.

 

[milkshake]

The reason I wanted to buy it was to port it to Pandora, and then a month or so later open up the source. Mr. Hugi stated that he `has plans' to update when I offered to buy it, but seeing as there hasn't been an update sonce '03, i doubt it. The forums are also reduced to spam.

out of curiosity how much was mr hugi trying to fleece you for?

 

[BaDToaD]

@hobbyman II & Prometheus: Okay, okay. Maybe I just have missed the really good Spectrum- and C64-titles.

But R-Type and Elite aren't good examples. Elite is best on Amiga and the the Speccie-/C64-versions of R-Type just can't compare to the original arcade version. Pandora can emulate the best versions of these games at full speed.

You're an amiga nut I believe john4p? Go play Wizball on the Amiga and then play the c64 version and then tell me which has the best playability. The same goes for International Karate + and plenty of others.

To dismiss spectrum and c64 games as lacking playability is just plain wrong. It took the Amiga a year or two to get the the same levels of playability as the c64 games of the time.

Playability comes from good design and programming, not powerful processors and pretty graphics.

 

[Sploshi]

We need to decide how we're going to decide on which games we're going to play.

We could have it change weekly and during the week people post their ideas and then a poll is made of the most popular ones and then whichever option gets the most votes is the game for that week?

And would it be possible to have a global online highscores for homebrew games? I.e, a site that displays the highscores for all homebrew games (someone could write a script for the developers to include in their games so that the scores get sent to the website)

Just ideas

 

[vadsamoht]

And would it be possible to have a global online highscores for homebrew games? I.e, a site that displays the highscores for all homebrew games (someone could write a script for the developers to include in their games so that the scores get sent to the website)

Just ideas

Possible? Certainly. but you will be relying on developers implementing a specific code spec, and then you'll need to find a web host, etc. etc.

 

[skeezix]

If its popularity based it'll avoidmedium and lesser popularity machines, i worry. Ie: neverdosbox or atari st, but plenty of snes. *shrug*

(which is. Ode for my tastes being obscure

Jeffphone

 

[Exophase]

Unfortunately nobody seems to be working on it though. I offered to buy the rights and source for Kaillera some time ago, but the asking price was way too high for me to fund.

What's so great about Kaillera? Last I was aware it's purely client/server which will usually have a much worse latency than latency negotiated peer to peer, and it was using UDP with not so great error detection.. Correct me if things have changed but these are all issues the official FAQ talks about. We don't want to start with netplay that desyncs. Centralized servers for console netplay have a few benefits, but they also have a lot of downsides. They're really more appropriate for MMOs and what have you.

As far as nobody working on it goes, the first version of Temper I release for Pandora will have netplay. It'll need a while before it really matuers, but I'm willing to eventually work with others to get it into other emulators too.

 

[vadsamoht]

Unfortunately nobody seems to be working on it though. I offered to buy the rights and source for Kaillera some time ago, but the asking price was way too high for me to fund.

What's so great about Kaillera? Last I was aware it's purely client/server which will usually have a much worse latency than latency negotiated peer to peer, and it was using UDP with not so great error detection.. Correct me if things have changed but these are all issues the official FAQ talks about. We don't want to start with netplay that desyncs. Centralized servers for console netplay have a few benefits, but they also have a lot of downsides. They're really more appropriate for MMOs and what have you.

As far as nobody working on it goes, the first version of Temper I release for Pandora will have netplay. It'll need a while before it really matuers, but I'm willing to eventually work with others to get it into other emulators too.

Kaillera is far from ideal, but it has been proven to be relatively stable, which was why I looked into it. If Temper works, then I'm genuinely pleased that there will finally be some form of netplay - that was the only goal.

 

[Exophase]

Kaillera is far from ideal, but it has been proven to be relatively stable, which was why I looked into it. If Temper works, then I'm genuinely pleased that there will finally be some form of netplay - that was the only goal.

fwiw, if you do prefer client/server and want some netplay action ASAP Mednafen can be ported. That'll give you netplay over several platforms right away, and the server can be ran on a PC.

 

[milkshake]

I think the idea of peer to peer netplay sounds good maybe you should do an open source project once you have released your game so others can help it mature or contribute ideas?

 

[john4p]

Go play Wizball on the Amiga and then play the c64 version and then tell me which has the best playability. The same goes for International Karate + and plenty of others.

Yeah, Wizball is a poor port on the Amiga. Katakis would be another example (but that is not only inferior but also completely different on the Amiga).
But IK+'s gameplay is on the Amiga just as good as on the C64 - only with better sound and graphics.
Turrican I&II are one of the best games for the C64. Incredible what Manfred Trenz pulled off on the C64 with those.
Still the experience on the Amiga-versions with much better graphics, completely smooth scrolling in every direction and Huelsbeck's music is on a whole new level.

To dismiss spectrum and c64 games as lacking playability is just plain wrong. It took the Amiga a year or two to get the the same levels of playability as the c64 games of the time.

Fine, let's play the best of their library, too.
I just hope that in a league we wouldn't play only C64- and Speccie-games most of the time.

If its popularity based it'll avoidmedium and lesser popularity machines, i worry. Ie: neverdosbox or atari st, but plenty of snes. *shrug*

Here is a suggestion to solve this problem:

1. Have a vote for the most popular systems.
=> resulting for example in: Amiga, SNES, C64, NES, Spectrum and Genesis

2. Now let's play games for these systems in a rotation with one-week voting for 2 games to be played on the next system and having two weeks playing periods (in the 2nd week voting could start for the 2 games being played on the next system, etc.).
=> for example:

| week | system | voting
==========================================================
|   1  |   -    | voting for 2 games to be played on Amiga
|   2  | Amiga  | -
|   3  | Amiga  | voting for 2 games to be played on SNES
|   4  |  SNES  | -
|   5  |  SNES  | voting for 2 games to be played on C64
|   6  |  C64   | -
|   7  |  C64   | voting for 2 games to be played on NES
|   8  |  NES   | -
...

3. In order to get to play games of other systems, too, after having played on the most popular systems we could then have a "special round" for that only games might be voted that are on different systems (not among the popular ones).

=> So one "rotation" would be 2 weeks Amiga-, then 2 weeks SNES-, then C64-, then NES-, then Spectrum-, then Genesis-games and then 2 weeks games for other systems.

An alternative could be we'd play 1 Amiga- and 1 SNES-game simultaneously for 2 weeks, then 1 C64- and 1 NES-title for the next 2 weeks and so on.

One season could consist of 2 or 3 of these rotations.

As scoring-system for the league we could use something like Formula 1's 25-18-15-12-10-8-6-4-3-2-1 or 15-12-10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1 or something like that.

 

[Bosbeetle]

I voted no because I am terrible at games (that require action)

anyway how can you have a league in adventure games