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

[levi]

Yep, no complaints about the latest set of graphics, very nice.  I also prefer the bordered icon.

 

[Link]

It all looks good.  Glad to see this coming together.  Gotta practice up on Galaxian

 

[skeezix]

Now now Link, be nice; you'll get your comeuppance!

jeff

 

[Asmo]

Played galaxian a couple of times today and exited correctly, but no score appeared on the table (no great loss, not past 4k either time) - MsPacman updates almost immediately though.

 

[skeezix]

Updated server --

i) should be sending down hiscores of _zero_ to you when you start up

ii) extended length of scoreboards to 500 now (!) (and they show number of unique profiles at the bottom, for lulz)

iii) wiped the galaxian table due to corruption (too many duplicates; if anyone is really offended, I can try to go through the logs to figure out who earned what.)

This should take care of the dupe-score issue, as well as making Galaxian scoring accessible (same as mspacman has been)

So now you can really get at Galaxian

 

[skeezix]

Played galaxian a couple of times today and exited correctly, but no score appeared on the table (no great loss, not past 4k either time) - MsPacman updates almost immediately though.

The latest promotion should fix this up; the games are designed for high-score only, so that was my original goal (to be in the same spirit), and hence it was sending down the highest score for you to beat; thus your score would only register if it was higher. With mspacman, it was reseting so your score would come to my server regardless, and my server woudl genereate the leaderboard.

After seeing the two approaches, we know the mspacman approach is clearly superior.. the game can't really judge for itself, but the online leaderboard is where all the action is. So I've cut Galaxian over now, so they both work the same way though more defined.. it starts up with you seeing a high score of zero, so any score you achieve is your own score. Then when it syncs up, your score will enter into the leaderboards and you can go see it.

To make it more fun, I shall have to alter the Pandora Launcher to pop up a window before/after maybe showing the top-scores, so you can see how you factor in, since the games themselves can't really know. (ie: With MsPac and Galax only showing a single score, and most later games showing only 5 or 10 .. there just have no meaning when comparing to our online 500+ leaderboards.)

So hit Galax again and you shoudl be good

jeff

 

[skeezix]

Do we want achievcements? I've not added a profile-page yet, but sometime in the future .. (ie: so you can get a list of your score entries say, and your achivements, and notifications..)

- achieved a #1 score in <gamename>

- achieved #1 in two or more games

- played all games in current season

- played all known games

.. I dunno. Doesn't seem like too many options for useful achievements.

 

[mcobit]

I could make little icons for archivements if you like.

Should archivements be per game or universal?

Like: reach xxxxx score.

Reach level xx.

Get two 800 scores in one level by shooting the mothership. (However you could detect that)

Or something like that.

 

[skeezix]

Lets not jump the gun Do we want achievements? and if so, someone make up a list of them then we can UI it up.. how to present them? and then finally.. artwork, etc

jeff

 

[skeezix]

Uploading slightly modified pnd-file to the repo; check in 5 minutes

- new icon

- new splash-screen (borth courtesey mcobit and levi, above)

- in-game "ROT" art not changed yet, since its bigger and I'll have to muck with UI layouts.. no time for that today

* the hi-score sync is now before/after the emu launch, not the launcher start/stop. So the launch comes up a bit faster now and shuts down quicker, but launching the emu takes a moment longer as the server is queried/updated

- various server tweaks over the last couple hours

--> hopefully should be a smoother overall operation

to do still: nub mode swwitcheroo in the launcher wrapped around the emu, not around the launcher (for mcobit and his busted touchscreen)

to do still: update in-launcher artwork

to do still: significant UI updates in launcher -- show scores before/after emu launch, slide buttons around, add button to run in debug server not primary server, add panels or something for all-time games and not just in-season games, and so on ..

to do still: do we want email notifications when your score gets beat (if you're in top-5 say)?

to do still: maybe a nicer error if running c4a with wifi/network down .. "try enabling wifi" .. or maybe I should just try implicitly toggling the network on and waiting a minute .. but thats presumptuous

to do still: Mr. Do, Donkey Kong, Raiden, Gyruss, Skyshark, Tempest, ........ etc

jeff

http://repo.openpandora.org/?page=detail&app=compo4all-skeezix-0001

edit: for new icon to appear, you can reboot, or del /tmp/iconcache/c4a* and eject/insert the SD (it gets cached on first load of the session)

edit2: I'll hopefully post another quickie update pnd tomorrow or late tonight, that has the pre-/post- emu highscore table; I'll just make a simple text viewer, much like the current high score tables are on the 'website'; this way people who aren't checking into this thread will see scoring going on, now wonder w-t-f is going on. then I can rest a few days maybe, as its getting pretty stable right now.

 

[Ian J]

Just tried the latest version & my scores are now showing up, awesome work on this it adds a new lease of life to some games I wouldn't have thought to play.

MsPac-Man being one, I never really liked pac-man or the like, I just couldn't get on with the games.

Sent from my GT-I9300

 

[Ian J]

Galaxian is added to the server now as well; it'll automatically show up in your C4A Launcher
I'm probably being dumb, but which galaxian version is it.  I have tried 3 or 4 roms none of which seem to  work.
 
Thanks
 
CJ
 
PS - Mame of thrones is a great title
PPS - Mcobit, really like the graphic

1st post tells you which version of roms to use MAME .106.

Sent from my GT-I9300

 

[skeezix]

Added Space Invaders support, and fiddled with server a bunch

Leaderboard is here (and I'll add to first post.)

http://skeezix.wallednetworks.com:13001/scoreboard_1/invaders/

I coded up Rolling Thunder as well (first of the bunch with its own 5 person score table) .. but for some reason, MAME is not updating the hi-file very often .. get a new score, and MAME doesn't save it, so we can't sync it very well. Annoying.

I'll work on Donkey Kong or Mr Do then instead, but I was sort of looking forward to pwning you all at Rolling Thunder

jeff

 

[levi]

To make it more fun, I shall have to alter the Pandora Launcher to pop up a window before/after maybe showing the top-scores, so you can see how you factor in, since the games themselves can't really know. (ie: With MsPac and Galax only showing a single score, and most later games showing only 5 or 10 .. there just have no meaning when comparing to our online 500+ leaderboards.)

That sounds good, but I would suggest coding that as part of enabling viewing of the entire high score table from the client.  For the foreseeable future, I'm fine with checking the website to see how my score ranks, so I don't see the need to rush out an early version of the client server protocol when it might need updating to cope with syncing down the full list in an upcoming version.  OTOH if you think you've got a good handle on the requirements for that already and want to do this as part of proofing that final tech that's fine by me.

Perhaps update the documentation to mention the competition and website pretty near the top, rather than  it just being the standard PanMAME documentation.  Can you update the repo description to link this thread?  I see you've added a comment linking the website, but something more permanent would be better.

Regarding achievements, if we're looking at the xbox model where achievements are in-game, I guess we're looking more at ones like 'beat level x' rather than 'beat all games'.  Personally though I'm not a fan of artificial achievements, and for me just seeing my name appearing in the hi-score table is enough motivation.

 

[mcobit]

I can do a more banner like logo for the launcher if you prefer. That way you don't have to change the gui elements around.

 

[mcobit]

Here is a graphic, that might be better suited for the top of the launcher:




Edit: If I may suggest: Instead of a grey window while syncing, the window could show a nice "SYNCING..." with some animated indicator.

 

[mcobit]

Here is some animation that could be used while talking to the server:

Attached are the single frames in png format.

syncing.zip

 

[ibisum]

This is really, really cool!  

 

[Linux-SWAT]

Neat :^).

 

[Mr_Loon]

I'm loving the way this is coming together.

Just a few random thoughts :

It might be worth limiting people to a maximum of say 3 entries per high score chart, it would be a shame to put Link off going for 100,000 on Ms Pacman just because he felt bad about taking up the top 100 scores on the table whilst doing so

Not sure we really need achievements, they never really appealed to me & would be hideously complex to implement for things like 'Get two 800 scores in one level by shooting the mothership' etc. No objections of course if they do get introduced.

Love the icons & graphics from mcobit

About hi scores in general on Mame : from memory hi score saving support (via hiscore.dat) is slightly patchy & not officially supported, some games (like Phoenix) never seemed to record hi scores, could be that Rolling Thunder is one of those games.

This version of Mame is a great addition to the community, keep up the good work