[Release] Compo4all MAME - ladder/scoreboard competition for classic arcade games :)

[skeezix]

If the pnd is mounted, and then you update the pnd while already mounted.. I think the correct term would be 'the behaviour is undefined' Probably depends how you did it, or how your updater did it; did it download a fresh copy with a temp name, and move it over the existing one? In which case open files would staty against the old (now missing) one, but new opens would get the new one. So it would depend on how aufs handles it.

Also, since I don't squashfs these guys.. they're just iso's .. maybe it works better .. maybe a squashfs'd one would just blow up?

Hard to say.. theres a few layers at work here. Best not to mess with a file while it is mounted, though

Messing with the appdata is no biggy of course ..

Imagine mounting an iso in windows, osx .. and then screwing with the .iso while also having the directory opened in a mount? who knows..

(a pnd is essentially an iso, mounted so writebacks go to appdata.)

jeff

 

[skeezix]

OKay, you can now get a list of all scoreboards on one page, to make life easy:

http://skeezix.wallednetworks.com:13001/links_1

That will in turn let you see last months tally, and the current month so far.

We'll find out if it works in an hour

jeff

Also added 'all time' to the table; in theory now, when submitting a score..

- it goes to the current month

- it goes to the magic 'all time' month as well <- coded just in time for end of month

Midnight passes..

OKay, it actually works So the scores you saw on the 28th are immortalized now! (and also passed into all-time's view to see how they fare!) .. the current month is now empty, so, have at !

 

[mal_CanDo]

Def worth posting in general to say about the compo - I wonder if ED could put out a FB message about it?

 

[Jumpman]

Thanks Jeff, this is classic gaming done right.

It took me awhile to finally decide to set this up, but I gave it a go this morning and I'm loving it. First game of Ms. Pacman got me the top spot, but it wasn't my best showing. Now it's time to give DK and Galaxian a go.

Look out Guys/Gals, Jumpman has entered the fray

Chris

 

[DrCJBoduma]

Def worth posting in general to say about the compo - I wonder if ED could put out a FB message about it?

+1 

I think there are a load of people who would love this and have no idea it even exists.  

I know it's only beta or early days but it's a winner already.

CJ

Yay - For immortalising the scores the day after I managed to top the table on donkey kong   (pesky third spring level - Grrrrr)

PS - I'm not sure if having an ever rolling month by month compo will keep things fresh for the long term.  IMHO I prefer the idea of having a few new featured games presented as a challenge for a month and then removed (can come back again at a later date) then some fresh games coming in the next month.....and so on.  

PPS - With donkey kong - Do you have to actually enter your name in the high score table at the end or not?

 

[skeezix]

Your profile is whats used on the website; the games make you put something in, but it doesn't matter to us what it is.

I've not kicked off the actual prizes-compo yet.. still need to think about which games to do (to minimize super-scorers, but still be awesome and pull people in.. any ideas?)

So we're still in fun-play with the month tallies..

I think we're out of beta; I changed the topic to 'release' for this thread in the boards, to be less intimidating, but we may need a new through.. or get everyone out pumping it up, to get more people.

Having prizes on the line may help

Someone want to start a thread and get _nominations_ for the next few games to add, some of which will be the actual compo games? And then run a poll to pick which shoudl be the compop games?

I'm tied up the next day or two, not much board time likely, hard to say

jeff

I am glad you guys are liking this; its definately bringing something back, from the days when you'd put a quarter on the side of the monitor to reserve your spot, then go at a machie and kick some guys score off

Tempted to make a build for PC (with a different server port perhaps, to keep scores separate..), get more bodies involved.

 

[levi]

I reckon this thread gets bumped up often enough to attract the attention of anyone checking this forum. Once we kick off ROT2 proper we can hopefully get a News post, or post in General looking for members and volunteers for roles (assuming we run it a bit like ROT1, where we split the task into four roles from memory, though your system has automated at least one of those). It may even be worth letting those few wanderers over at the other place know, as per last time, who knows.


I do think this could be a great success on other platforms once we've proofed it on Pandora, although it would be cooler if it was restricted to open handhelds that can run MAME for a little while at least.

 

[skeezix]

Mr. Do! added

http://skeezix.wallednetworks.com:13001/links_1

jeff

 

[skeezix]

I really want to drum up attention; I mean, over the few weeks we've had, we've had about 50 profiles made, but only about half of them submitted scores (!? couldn't get onto the high score table at all, for one of the games? or just didn't bother setting up any roms, after the first run and creating profile?) Not interested in the game listing? Or ran once, never came back?

So almost curious.. what of the many possible reasons did people not try us out? did they not come back? .. ie: so we can combat this, get more people.

For a healthy 'league', or at least, a healthy amount of peopel to keep it fun for each other, we'd probabyl need 100 people or something in it, so that half of them can be busy at any given time and not submitting, leaving enough to keep it interesting. If you end up seeing only 5 peopel in a given scoreboard, your'e goign to be 'meh' and pass it up..

But I'm not good at drumming up attention; or maybe we're really really niche here, since perhaps arcade fols are distirbuted across a wide swath of games, and any given person won't likely find many/any in our c4a supported list.. ?

jeff

 

[skeezix]

If you would like to help me support a game, in some small way..

Send me a zip file that contains 2 or 3 different .hi files from panmame/s appdata/hi directory.

steps:

- delete the hi file for the game that you have now (ie: delete mrdo.hi)

- run the game, let it come up to the screen, start up a game and then exit the emu normally, before you score anything

-   capture that .hi file (mrdo.hi say) and name it mrdo.hi.template <- a plain vanilla untouched hi file

- run the game, play the game, get yourself onto the high score tabe

 -   name your initials AZ1 or AZsomething; the A and Z are important, so I can decode the character set they're using

-    name the .hi file after your score; mrdo.hi.12310az1 <- so I know to look for 12310 score with initials az1

 -  quit the emu, run it again

-  did the emu show up with your hi score showing from before? (12310 az1 say?)

    --> if not, then mame 0106 is not properly supporting hi-score files, and we're boned for now

   --> if it did pick up the hi score from before, then the .hi file is probably working in mame 0106, and we're good

-  and get another hi score, and call it after the initials again

- so now we know

    - mame supports hi for this game

    - we have a raw all defaults 'template' file <- we need this for serving out the files

    - we have a hi score file with a known score and AZ1 initials <- so I can figure out how scores are stored

   - we have another hi score (so 2 or more in the same table),  <- so I can figure out the separation between multiple scores, or how they're interleaved, etc

.. Oh yeah, try to write up whats in the template default hi scores:

    "mr do has 10 slots in its table; score, initials, and timing crap we can ignore; default scores are 10,000 for all slots'.

    or for fshark, list off the scores, since the default has a different score in each slot.

Given those 3 .hi files, I can generally work it out pretty quick.

Took me about 10 tries or Mr. Do! to get the files I need, since I never played it much before (I've got the arcade pcb, but never played it beyond testing it works), so that playtime was fun, but cost me time

jeff

 

[Asmo]

Mr. Do! added

Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

 

[mal_CanDo]

Just added a tips page for Galaxians and Ms Pacman, for anyone to post any helpful info for new players.

Galaxian

http://boards.openpandora.org/index.php/topic/12217-monthly-competition-game-tips-galaxian/

Ms Pacman

http://boards.openpandora.org/index.php/topic/12218-monthly-competition-game-tips-ms-pacman/

I've added some tips for Galaxian, someone with a higher score than me in Ms Pacman should probably do the same

 

[aszu]

I`d be happy to help with "material" prizes

I've not kicked off the actual prizes-compo yet.. still need to think about which games to do (to minimize super-scorers, but still be awesome and pull people in.. any ideas?)

So we're still in fun-play with the month tallies..

Having prizes on the line may help

 

[mcobit]

Wow, over 17000 on galaxian. I think I will never be able to reach that.

 

[skeezix]

Or Asmo on Mr Do .. Wtfbbq

 

[Asmo]

I do like my Mr Do...

BTW it seems to be submitting all the scores in the player's in-game high score table for that session of play - it presently shows me as having the top 5 scores (the other 4 not shown) but I only started and exited the game once (though I did play 5 games within that session!)

 

[skeezix]

Sure, why not? You earn 10 new scores in a table, it posts them all.. Whats the diff if you exited the emu 10 times or just one.. Games are games .


*shrug*

 

[levi]

That's how it's meant to work, I believe. Identify all player scores by verifying against the default values, then save those to the high score tables. Is that not what this should be doing?


Regarding non scoring registerers, is there any trend when this happened? I mean, if it's people who registered towards the end of last month, when all the high score tables were pretty mega, and there was no fresh table that could explain it. Or perhaps people didn't like the games that were available. Perhaps people didn't have the roms to hand, and haven't got round to sourcing them - I know I didn't have them as images when I found this thread. Just ideas.


Actually, one of the better ideas might be to consider how they found your PND. If they spotted it on the Repo, would it be clear what to do to make it work? You've a link to the high score tables in the comments section (for now), but when you start up the PND it just shows you the PanMAME help - nothing about needing images for specific games, nothing about the competitive nature. It's promising they got as far as registering an account - I'd wonder if there were more people that installed the PND seeing it on the repo, but stopped before that hurdle.

 

[Asmo]

Sure, why not? You earn 10 new scores in a table, it posts them all.. Whats the diff if you exited the emu 10 times or just one.. Games are games .

*shrug*

Just didn't want ppl to think there was some plot to push their scores off the page by sheer number of submitted entries or something!

The diff, as such, would be when you exit after play you would have achieved the best score you could in that session of play, any lower scores recorded that time would seem superfluous when it's the highest that counts? But if it doesn't gum up the tables, no issue.

 

[levi]

One thing I keep forgetting to report is that I've noticed the number of unique profiles reported at the bottom of high score tables is generally one more than the number of profiles in the table as I count them.  It's quite possible I'm just counting them wrong, but it seems to me they're all one over except for February's fshark table.  Perhaps that goes some way to explain the non scoring registered?

I did think it might be to do with the blank '-' entry that starts every table, but the Feb fshark table has that entry too, but my my reckoning gets the number right.