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


For the mame audio/video options press TAB (Fn+Space) during gameplay, you'll see a bar appear at the bottom center of the screen, press up/down to cycle through the available options (will depend on the game *) - the various audio channels will appear separately, including the samples. Normally these should be defaulting to appropriate settings, but maybe if a game config was saved from the main Mame setup menu (press Space), something could have been borked? Normally any changes made are reset when you next load that game.

In Donkey Kong/Jr I see the samples volume are all either at .25 or .55.

Might be worth re-copying the samples files.

* For anyone struggling to see Vector games properly in PanMame, the 'Vector Intensity' option will appear here if it's a vector game, set it to the maximum....
 
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I deleted everything thing and did a fresh install, and I'm still having the same problem. I also tried the menu and everything seems to be as it should, still no sample sounds. I also tried fresh sample files, and still nothing. Everything works perfectly in Mame4All, so I know the sample files are good, plus they worked originally under Compo and now they don't. I'm stumped, as I don't know why sample sounds worked at first and now they don't. Curious-er and Curious-er  :p

Chris
 
I deleted everything thing and did a fresh install, and I'm still having the same problem. I also tried the menu and everything seems to be as it should, still no sample sounds.(...) they worked originally under Compo and now they don't. I'm stumped, as I don't know why sample sounds worked at first and now they don't. Curious-er and Curious-er  :p

Chris
Wait a minute.. My DKjr samples are fine, I'm hearing them all - but now I've rechecked DK with the volume up, you're right - The sounds for Mario's walking for example, are missing (if he walks silently, then your samples aren't working in PanMame for some reason). To add to the mystery, I tried DK under PanMame - on a different card, booting from a different OS card too for good measure, and the Donkey Kong samples don't play under PanMame at all - only under Mame4All - so they're good, just not recognised by PanMame. My DKJr samples are working though.
There are only 3 sample wavs in the DK zip, the squeaky walk sound is the most obvious one that's missing. There's something funny about PanMame sometimes not seeing files, I have found it ignores some of my roms depending which kernel is used too, though the DK samples failed under old or new kernel when I tried that..

If anyone is hearing all the DK samples, could they maybe describe the contents of their sample zip?

My working dkongjr.zip (samples) file, 291.2kB, contains:

climb0.wav

climb1.wav

climb2.wav

death.wav

drop.wav

jump.wav

land.wav

roar.wav

snapjaw.wav

walk0.wav

walk1.wav

walk2.wav
 
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Thanks Asmo, I was starting to think I was loosing my mind. 

So I may have have some success with a different "sample" file, but there is also a problem within Panmame that causes issues.

Chris
 
Tried dkongjr. Not sure if I hear all sounds, but I guess. In the intro I hear a melody and a stomping sound once DK is struggling to get out of the cage. In the first level I hear a BG-music (can't really call it music) and  sounds when DKjr is moving, climbing, jumping, collecting food. Didn't play that much. My /media/trans8/pandora/appdata/c4a-mame/sample contains only two files so far: "dkong.zip" and "dkongjr.zip".  These have the same name as the rom-file-zips but are of course not the same. But I guess that's clear to everyone. I unpacked them to get the md5sums for them (and both zip-files):

112c01ad44f2c454b9bd5798286b28  dkong.zip

501126849a890d80db504059416d6654  dkstomp.wav
a856c3a99c809f848bbfb76cce2807e7  effect00.wav
dcdadad97bf6ae7e9c9d9993e3b6216b  effect01.wav
9adc8c3819ca314a6369ae94da712ff3  effect02.wav
7e98d63bfd89481c7262cba1e1bf3901  jump.wav
8fe00c6526cdc66a2f651a087f416f7e  run01.wav
053676edc383c1fbac635af2be002c70  run02.wav
fe7a174b9b063de1fc8bf35a55909a32  run03.wav
 

49f34a2fd32e326860eef6ac2934a3f3  dkongjr.zip

a34f0a2c9b426432853ab16ae0f43300  climb.wav
615fc5db970ad08f788872f7417f07b5  climb0.wav
a34f0a2c9b426432853ab16ae0f43300  climb1.wav
65b1fd85e10c85bcdbf58afd0ed6aad4  climb2.wav
40ea331108b1b43174b7bb4d66db0b81  death.wav
a5112c01ad44f2c454b9bd5798286b28  dkong.zip
3237ba006f02abfc929f3938a27c7095  drop.wav
2e84d1867beed708e917d90fe3e36972  jump.wav
5e9c35b57ec05ea386c5fe39a3a2d7b3  land.wav
c037f07c458bb5baa87c88caa199c961  roar.wav
997e45ebb8ca788eb3d72d3fb2ddc445  snapjaw.wav
a99c7d54f56b00ef0d5657f7c1b6c8de  walk.wav
a99c7d54f56b00ef0d5657f7c1b6c8de  walk0.wav
fd6d310ffee561c4376807d7cb5c848f  walk1.wav
64793f5e9d382b89248e81b7962bad8e  walk2.wav
 
 
Looks like Lomaxx's sample file is the right one for PanMame, I replaced mine with one with those contents (119.2kB) and all sounds work now. Fewer files in the zip or a different size and it's too old/too weird!
 
Anybody else remember Gravitar or Space Duel (awesome asteroids sequel by Atari). Both are very zen games. Good for the mind.
 
Thanks guys. It never occurred to me that mame used different sample files like it does for roms, and that issues may arise with different versions of Mame being used. Mame.........Love & Hate ;)

Problem Solved!

Chris
 
Anybody else remember Gravitar or Space Duel (awesome asteroids sequel by Atari). Both are very zen games. Good for the mind.
Two of my favorite games :) Space Duel broke my head .. play multiplayer with player-versus-player (not assistance) mode.. one guy has a engine, the other guy has a gun, and they're tethered with an elastic band. Its totally mental! One guy trying to ram the other dude into asteroids while he furiously tries to shoot them :eek:
 
A few requests:

1. Is it possible to hide those boxes that constantly pop up for half a second each?

2. Would you consider writing scores downloaded from the compo back to the .hi files so that when you're ingame, you can see them there to?

3. "Select Donkey Kong" and "Play" buttons are still hanging partially off the bottom of the screen

4. I don't know how easy this would be, but could you grayout, or filter off games where the roms aren't found/acceptable. Obviously you still want them visible/accessible. I put my Bubble Bobble roms on, and sat there for a couple of minutes thinking it was taking ages to load, in reality it had failed to start with the particular rom set I have

Cheers

Edit:

Also, what's the chances we could incorporate some non-MAME games? ie, I really like Spout, and there's a Pandora build. All it does is create a file with the scores in. It's open source, so could make a special build for the compo

In fact, a further thought would be creating a Compo4All library that devs could link into their games? Maybe I'm taking this a bit too far, but I think it'd be pretty cool
 
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2. Would you consider writing scores downloaded from the compo back to the .hi files so that when you're ingame, you can see them there to?

4. I don't know how easy this would be, but could you grayout, or filter off games where the roms aren't found/acceptable. Obviously you still want them visible/accessible. I put my Bubble Bobble roms on, and sat there for a couple of minutes thinking it was taking ages to load, in reality it had failed to start with the particular rom set I have
re (2) - there might be a problem with games (particularly those that have a single high score), if high scores are present when a game starts, players that don't beat it won't have a shot at registering a score at all?They could reset the game in Mame's own menu to get round this, but there'd need to be notification of this requirement for the uninitiated ;)

re (4) Pending any adoption of this suggestion to avoid being left in the dark needlessly, test your Roms in PanMame, if it works in that it should work in this.
 
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re (2) - there might be a problem with games (particularly those that have a single high score), if high scores are present when a game starts, players that don't beat it won't have a shot at registering a score at all?
Fair point, I didn't really think about that.
re (4) Pending any adoption of this suggestion to avoid being left in the dark needlessly, test your Roms in PanMame, if it works in that it should work in this.
That's why I offered "graying them out". I probably won't play all the games, and depending on if the menu just gets a long list of buttons, might just be easier to show the ones I want to compete in (that I have the roms on). I didn't have PanMAME installed at the time - I was using MAME4All.
 
My proposal: Make c4a-mame playable offline including local cache for high-scores. That way I could play while on the run and sync scores when I am at home. Even when I am not on the run this would enable me to sync scores when I want to (e.g. once a week). Because of this starting/switching/ending a game would also get faster. The cache would have to be saved per c4a-account as you have to keep in mind that in theory the same version of c4a-mame might be used with multiple accounts.
 
A few requests:


1. Is it possible to hide those boxes that constantly pop up for half a second each?


2. Would you consider writing scores downloaded from the compo back to the .hi files so that when you're ingame, you can see them there to?


3. "Select Donkey Kong" and "Play" buttons are still hanging partially off the bottom of the screen


4. I don't know how easy this would be, but could you grayout, or filter off games where the roms aren't found/acceptable. Obviously you still want them visible/accessible. I put my Bubble Bobble roms on, and sat there for a couple of minutes thinking it was taking ages to load, in reality it had failed to start with the particular rom set I have


Cheers


Edit:


Also, what's the chances we could incorporate some non-MAME games? ie, I really like Spout, and there's a Pandora build. All it does is create a file with the scores in. It's open source, so could make a special build for the compo


In fact, a further thought would be creating a Compo4All library that devs could link into their games? Maybe I'm taking this a bit too far, but I think it'd be pretty cool


I'll do a client update in awhile, that fixes up a bunch of little issues; ie: rearrange buttons a bit to make more room and stop sloughing off the edge, maybe allow a 'offline mode' for when wifi is down, handle cases when wifi was up and is now down (retry, etc), etc.

i) The boxes are actually status updates where it announces that its pulling up/down some info to server and why; tyhey just show up blank right now since GTK is dumb and I need to fix it :)

ii) It originally pulled down scores; heck, prior to that I had it updating the game RAM live to show the current-to-the-second scores, but it really hated that ;) But it became a little problematic to work, so I'll revisit it later -- ie: right now it tries to reset to 0000 sort of score, or to the 'default' of a freshly booted machine; then when you submit a score RAM chunk or file, it breaks it up and compares to the known state sent down to the client .. if it sent position 3 as 1234 and position 4 as 2345, and it sees something else there, it knows theres been a change.. nice and easy. But if its a case when Jim sent up score 1234, and it sends that down to you, and then you submit a score Bob 2345, then it sees new Jim and new Bob, and it has to work out that Jim 1234 is old; or is it you, also? etc.. a lot of cases suddenly, and I found it not perfect all the time.. we ended up with 'looper' scores, where it'd go down to you, abck up and you'd end up with 5 peopel getting the 'same score' ... more accurate to just send down a blank, and then you look online.

.... another bigger problem was .. if you send down a score-table to a game, then the game will only register your score if you beat _those scores_; so if Space Invaders (only has 1 score total) and I send down SomeBigScore, then you cannot get onto the scoreboard _at all_ unless you exceed SomebigScore .. ie: after the third day, only the very top player can get a score _at all_; instead, we send 0000, and then everyon can registe their scvore into the _Game_, and the game pushes it upstream to my server, which evaluates if it makes the _scoreboard_.

So sending 0/default is much handier/reasonable. But there are workaround and compromises.. ifthe game has a table of 5, send the top/middle/low score for 1-2-3, and leave 4-5 blank say; etc.. We can play more. I don't have infinite free time anymore :)

iv) maybe; its possible, but I want you to be able to see the score table, even if you can't play Also, I want to rewrite the client entirely, so dont' want to spend too much time fiddling with it :)

v) Yes, the architecture an handle non-MAME game;s ie: arguments sent to the server include platform and game submitting (pandora and advmame it uses now.) Coudl just as well be something else. I'd like to expand the client and client/server protocols a bit more, have a league-id and so on. ie: I'm intending on havaing a raspberry-pi league, and a desktop-league, and so on; and the online website shoudl let you pick which league, or even cross polinate.. let you compare your scores against a desktop scores, if you wasnted to, etc.

lots to do..

jeff
 
I should add a stats page/service for milkshake ..

show..

i) how many players have ever submitted scores?

ii) total score count submitted

iii) total scores submitted this month so far

iv) average number of scores per player

v) average number of score submissions per day

... jeff
 
I finally got my Pandora. yaaaaay! To celibrate, is it possible to make Outrun happen? I want to remember I used to be quite a mean Outrun player =D
 
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