DrCJBoduma
Active Member
website is down (for me at least) so it's probably related
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[Release] Compo4all MAME - ladder/scoreboard competition for classic arcade games :)
- Thread starter skeezix
- Start date
Link
ithic.com
Thanks. Didn't check there 
DrCJBoduma
Active Member
At least it stops you smashing our scores (for a while at least) :-DThanks. Didn't check there
Link
ithic.com
The Pac family is working on children. Has anyone gotten more than 3?
skeezix
Internal Development
The server wedged again for a few minutes. Rather annoying
I'm going to add a watchdog timer to it, so until I find the bug causing the server to wedge up, it'll at least restart itself after a minute of being wedged. I'll see if I can get time to do that tonight. (I'll just write up a job that pulls the highscore table, and if it takes more than say a few seconds, kill and restart the server. Lame, but thats how the entire internet runs, pretty much
jeff
I'm going to add a watchdog timer to it, so until I find the bug causing the server to wedge up, it'll at least restart itself after a minute of being wedged. I'll see if I can get time to do that tonight. (I'll just write up a job that pulls the highscore table, and if it takes more than say a few seconds, kill and restart the server. Lame, but thats how the entire internet runs, pretty much
jeff
levi
Still fresh, damnit!
Hmm, any logging to indicate where it's wedging? If it's when someone's uploading a score, that'd be less than ideal. Perhaps what happened to by first test yesterday.
FWIW it wasn't me today. I've just been practising in PanMAME until my battery died.
FWIW it wasn't me today. I've just been practising in PanMAME until my battery died.
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skeezix
Internal Development
I'm thinking Galaxian next, hopefully adding support in tonight or worst case, tomorrow night..
After that ..
Donkey Kong?
Arkanoid?
Black Tiger?
Space Invaders?
Burgertime?
So many classics..
After that ..
Donkey Kong?
Arkanoid?
Black Tiger?
Space Invaders?
Burgertime?
So many classics..
skeezix
Internal Development
It seems to be some spammerbot coming in and hammering it with a hundred random URLs and somewhere along the line, too many exceptions at the same time is causing it to wedg eup; I'm not sure if its thread exhaustion or what .. but I'll narrow in on it soon. Not a lot of data points yet, and could be more than one cause. Naturally, I had it up for a week without a problem.. its only when you go public that you have a problem
Thanks for your patience; at least, a watchdog timer should sort it out. (And maybe I'll add some retry logic to the score posting, so if it hangs are just the wrong time, the client can retry a few times..)
jeff
Asmo
Advanced Member
- Joined
- Oct 18, 2008
- Messages
- 2,279
Mr Dooooooo!I'm thinking Galaxian next, hopefully adding support in tonight or worst case, tomorrow night..
After that ..
Donkey Kong?
Arkanoid?
Black Tiger?
Space Invaders?
Burgertime?
So many classics..
Maybe Battlezone... and Gravitar... and. (/drifts off into dream)
Of the ones you've listed, Arkanoid is really tricky on the D-pad, and aggravating on the nubs. Definitely those with an external controller (even just a mouse) will flatten plain vanilla players.
Burgertime has some of that 90 degree trickiness, but none of the imprecise analog flailing about insanity.
levi
Still fresh, damnit!
Well, I guess that's what happens when you post a link on a public forumIt seems to be some spammerbot coming in and hammering it with a hundred random URLs and somewhere along the line, too many exceptions at the same time is causing it to wedg eup; I'm not sure if its thread exhaustion or what .. but I'll narrow in on it soon. Not a lot of data points yet, and could be more than one cause. Naturally, I had it up for a week without a problem.. its only when you go public that you have a problem
Although I assume it's spamming the upload port rather than the highscore port link you posted, assuming the two aren't the same.Games wise, I'd be up for Mr. Do. Played the hell out of that when I was younger. And I also loves me a bit of Defender action, but what I enjoyed most out of ROT1 was finding new classic games to play. So surprise me!
Link
ithic.com
I like Mr. Do as well. Galaga would be much more to my liking than Galaxian. But I understand the appeal. Donkey Kong would be fun too! Thanks again!
sebt3
homebrew player (P. & C.)
Having a robot.txt (to at least remove the legitimate) ?Well, I guess that's what happens when you post a link on a public forumIt seems to be some spammerbot coming in and hammering it with a hundred random URLs and somewhere along the line, too many exceptions at the same time is causing it to wedg eup; I'm not sure if its thread exhaustion or what .. but I'll narrow in on it soon. Not a lot of data points yet, and could be more than one cause. Naturally, I had it up for a week without a problem.. its only when you go public that you have a problem
Hmm, quite a few games support hiscore saving in MAME.
How hard would it be to create some kind of universal support for them?
Set the list to 0 when you start and grab the highest score after playing and upload them to the server.
This could add support for many games at once, and it'll sure be fun having MAME with an all-time-best list for multiple games
If your bandwidth is too low, we could set that up on my server as well.
How hard would it be to create some kind of universal support for them?
Set the list to 0 when you start and grab the highest score after playing and upload them to the server.
This could add support for many games at once, and it'll sure be fun having MAME with an all-time-best list for multiple games
If your bandwidth is too low, we could set that up on my server as well.
skeezix
Internal Development
It doesnt' work like that I'm afraid .. the MAME guys did map out where in RAM high score data is, quite often; no one maps out how it is structured unfortunately, and each game does it differently. I've decoded a couple dozen.. doesn't take too long to figure out, and theres really only so many ways to do it.
I almost want to make a crowd sourcing site and tool to do it, to en-masse figure out the highscore layout in RAM for all arcade games, and build handlers into the big emus.. then we could automate the shit out of highscores to websites and all sorts of stuff. But thats pretty large scope
For now, I'll build a dozen or two dozen games in, and we'll do some compos, and see how it goes
jeff
My bandwidth is enormous, but we may move to your box once we get things all sorted out (fancier score table frontends, etc.)
And if only other non-arcade platforms had predictable systems for storing the info, but alas not; sram sure, but whats in sram.. total mess.
I almost want to make a crowd sourcing site and tool to do it, to en-masse figure out the highscore layout in RAM for all arcade games, and build handlers into the big emus.. then we could automate the shit out of highscores to websites and all sorts of stuff. But thats pretty large scope
For now, I'll build a dozen or two dozen games in, and we'll do some compos, and see how it goes
jeff
My bandwidth is enormous, but we may move to your box once we get things all sorted out (fancier score table frontends, etc.)
And if only other non-arcade platforms had predictable systems for storing the info, but alas not; sram sure, but whats in sram.. total mess.
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skeezix
Internal Development
This is how much I suck -- just saw a trailer for Game of Thrones season 3 ..
and I heard it as "MAME of Thrones".
Okay, so now its.. Compo4All, ROT Season2 - the MAME of Thrones? whenever we start the actual season, anyway
yeah, I told you I suck
jeff
and I heard it as "MAME of Thrones".
Okay, so now its.. Compo4All, ROT Season2 - the MAME of Thrones? whenever we start the actual season, anyway
yeah, I told you I suck
jeff
ShleeDragon
Pro-Catflip
- Joined
- Aug 28, 2010
- Messages
- 1,749
I wonder if it's worth talking to the official mame devs and getting some kind of support in the GIT.
skeezix
Internal Development
Galaxian is added to the server now as well; it'll automatically show up in your C4A Launcher
Scoreboard is here for now:
http://skeezix.wallednetworks.com:13001/scoreboard_1/galaxian/
I'll update first post.
jeff
This current work is fairly preliminary; I should maybe give them a tip that I'm working on some of this, but theres no meat for MAME here yet anyway. Eventually this or some other project will probably add detailed score data format to MAME and other emus, but not today
jeff
Scoreboard is here for now:
http://skeezix.wallednetworks.com:13001/scoreboard_1/galaxian/
I'll update first post.
jeff
This current work is fairly preliminary; I should maybe give them a tip that I'm working on some of this, but theres no meat for MAME here yet anyway. Eventually this or some other project will probably add detailed score data format to MAME and other emus, but not today
jeff
levi
Still fresh, damnit!
Yay, I'm top of the highscore table (for the last time, probably!)
So how does this work, given it uploads scores when you quit the launcher? Will it upload the highscore from all games in the list (presumably skipping any that haven't got one)? Or is it just the last game you played?
Of course, there's an easy way to find out, but it seems I need to be able to best my current high score. Seems Galaxian stores its high score when turned off, unlike Ms.PacMan, and C4A is clever enough not to resubmit this score if you've not improved on it. Suffice to say, I've set myself a modest target which I'm not easily able to beat at present
So how does this work, given it uploads scores when you quit the launcher? Will it upload the highscore from all games in the list (presumably skipping any that haven't got one)? Or is it just the last game you played?
Of course, there's an easy way to find out, but it seems I need to be able to best my current high score. Seems Galaxian stores its high score when turned off, unlike Ms.PacMan, and C4A is clever enough not to resubmit this score if you've not improved on it. Suffice to say, I've set myself a modest target which I'm not easily able to beat at present
skeezix
Internal Development
*g* Currently the launcher is doing a sync at startup, and shutdown.
I will change it next release (soon?) so it syncs around each launch of the emu instead, so its more realtimey.
(And maybe I'll just drop the sync code into the emu proper one of these days, so that as its written into emulated RAM I sync it up in a stream, for true realtime. But theres lots of issues with that.. )
Currently a pre-sync is a pull from the server (generating the hi-scores dynamicly from the known data), and then post-sync is pushing them back up the server; the server looks to see if it things a given score is a looper (you pulled it down, and didn't earn it) or unchanged or if it actually deserved on the table (higher than the lowest entry), etc.
It gets more complicated for games that actually have a high score table (look at Joust, does it keep like 40 high scores? I need to check -- anyway, for games with a table, I need to look it over and compare it to the data last sent to you during your sync pull; for any entries that are new (not just moved up or down in the table), I can assume they're yours and factor them into the table. On sync pull, it generates a new table .. ie: for Donkey Kong which has a 5 high score table, I pick the top-5 from the top-500 or whateve rI keep, and build a table from that and send it into the emu. Theres some oddball cases that can occur, but in general, seems to work.
But yeah, when it does a sync, the launcher loops over all the games it currently knows are active and sycncs them; but the server ignores unchanged highscores and so on, so if you have 5 games in the launcher, and only played one, it'll sync all 5, but only do anything on the 1. (ie: it has to sync them all, since the smarts are in the server. Likewise, this gets you more real-timey data.)
jeff
This is why I added profiles and pulled in your preferred 3-letter initials -- so when I construct a new highscore table, I can stuff it with your initials right there in the game. Its way cool (to me, anyway). (and with profiles, I can turn on the option to email you when your score gets beat. I think I need to add a checkbox so you can toggle that option on or off, since I can see that being really annoying
So for Ms Pacman, looks like the main dogs in this race are LNK and BOB!
I will change it next release (soon?) so it syncs around each launch of the emu instead, so its more realtimey.
(And maybe I'll just drop the sync code into the emu proper one of these days, so that as its written into emulated RAM I sync it up in a stream, for true realtime. But theres lots of issues with that.. )
Currently a pre-sync is a pull from the server (generating the hi-scores dynamicly from the known data), and then post-sync is pushing them back up the server; the server looks to see if it things a given score is a looper (you pulled it down, and didn't earn it) or unchanged or if it actually deserved on the table (higher than the lowest entry), etc.
It gets more complicated for games that actually have a high score table (look at Joust, does it keep like 40 high scores? I need to check
-- anyway, for games with a table, I need to look it over and compare it to the data last sent to you during your sync pull; for any entries that are new (not just moved up or down in the table), I can assume they're yours and factor them into the table. On sync pull, it generates a new table .. ie: for Donkey Kong which has a 5 high score table, I pick the top-5 from the top-500 or whateve rI keep, and build a table from that and send it into the emu. Theres some oddball cases that can occur, but in general, seems to work.But yeah, when it does a sync, the launcher loops over all the games it currently knows are active and sycncs them; but the server ignores unchanged highscores and so on, so if you have 5 games in the launcher, and only played one, it'll sync all 5, but only do anything on the 1. (ie: it has to sync them all, since the smarts are in the server. Likewise, this gets you more real-timey data.)
jeff
This is why I added profiles and pulled in your preferred 3-letter initials -- so when I construct a new highscore table, I can stuff it with your initials right there in the game. Its way cool (to me, anyway). (and with profiles, I can turn on the option to email you when your score gets beat. I think I need to add a checkbox so you can toggle that option on or off, since I can see that being really annoying
So for Ms Pacman, looks like the main dogs in this race are LNK and BOB!
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levi
Still fresh, damnit!
Must admit, I don't much like the idea of it recording all my scores - some of my attempts are quite pitiful. Admittedly, they'll get knocked off the bottom of the list quickly enough, but I'd rather I can play again and improve my score before submitting anything
It'd make sense to me if it synced at emulator exit, so if you want to submit your score, just quit and then reload.
FWIW, the highscore thing seems to be behaving differently between Galaxian and Ms.PacMan - as I said before, on loading Ms.PacMan it shows the current community high score, but that gets reset to 0 once you start a game. In Galaxian it persists in game.
And regarding Ms.PacMan, I just can't make it past the bagel level. Those damn ghosts start teaming up too much there!
Oh, and a note on Galaxian, there may be a penalty for people using different era LCDs - the bullets being grey against a black background can be quite difficult to spot, and I've got a pretty recent Pandora, which I believe has better refresh characteristics (but worse colours in general).
Edit: No, they're white on black, but my LCD's obviously not fast enough to display them properly.
I seem to remember that the Vid Kidz games (Defender, Robotron et al.) are the worst for having massive high score tables, even on primitive hardware. Looking at it now, Robotron has a today's top ten and an all time top 40.
It'd make sense to me if it synced at emulator exit, so if you want to submit your score, just quit and then reload.
FWIW, the highscore thing seems to be behaving differently between Galaxian and Ms.PacMan - as I said before, on loading Ms.PacMan it shows the current community high score, but that gets reset to 0 once you start a game. In Galaxian it persists in game.
And regarding Ms.PacMan, I just can't make it past the bagel level. Those damn ghosts start teaming up too much there!
Oh, and a note on Galaxian, there may be a penalty for people using different era LCDs - the bullets being grey against a black background can be quite difficult to spot, and I've got a pretty recent Pandora, which I believe has better refresh characteristics (but worse colours in general).
Edit: No, they're white on black, but my LCD's obviously not fast enough to display them properly.
I seem to remember that the Vid Kidz games (Defender, Robotron et al.) are the worst for having massive high score tables, even on primitive hardware. Looking at it now, Robotron has a today's top ten and an all time top 40.
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