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

[Neelix]

There's a bug in the c4a banner:

Looks to me like it didn't finish downloading, so only the top line of the "INSERT COIN" layer downloaded and displayed. Try viewing the image and refreshing to re-download it.

- Neelix

 

[Linux-SWAT]

Ah, ok.

Anyway, i've noticed that on two different computers.

 

[_wb_]

Any progress on a stand-alone profile creator/manager? Or is that going to be included in the Tournament Hub (that would make sense)?

 

[skeezix]

The banner odditiy I've seen as well, and reported to milkshake; its some artefact from some browser versions doing something..

--

DrCJBoduma
.. looks okay to me on the c4a front page activity log (shows your higher score.)

--

Which games still don't work for scoring, so I can suppress them for now?

--

Standalone tool; yeah, only take me a couple hours to get it out, but have not done yet   Keep bugging me; its an insane period of time right now in RL, due to some 'complications', so I'm in tunnel-vision survival mode..

jeff

 

[DrCJBoduma]

DrCJBoduma

.. looks okay to me on the c4a front page activity log (shows your higher score.)

jeff

Yeah seems fine now ?? Not sure what happened, but was definitely showing older score earlier 

Nevermind

Chris

 

[mmKALLL]

By the way - it would be very very awesome if Galactic Artifact could have C4A compatibility. I absolutely loved the game.

 

[skeezix]

Scramble should now work ..

Please submit some scores, let me know

jeff

 

[Kumaki]

How'd you manage it?

Can u manage it for some of the other games that were here and then got taken down becuase they didn't register right?

 

[skeezix]

Scramble was a buglet; on inspection, it didn't look right.

Theres two main ways for adding arcade games into c4a; my doing it myself (Writing a driver for the game), and we also are leveraging a hacked-to-hell tool that some other guys wrote; it has a pile of games in it, but is buggy as heck and is obviously n ot comprehensive (since MAME is huge.) So we draw from the pool of their project when I'm busy, and if I have a moment I can write a new driver.

The ones that you want (city conneciton, new rally x..) need me to write a driver; so can happen sometime, but not yet. I have no time :/

So now we have b_o_b testing things against the blending of some of my code and this other teams project, to see what works easily; the ones he turns up positives for, can be added into c4a with a short config file change.

jeff

 

[Jumpman]

I'm guessing this thread is the "General" thread for Compo4All right? 

Hey, are there any other emu's out there that function like Compo4All, but are for the PC, Linux, Android, etc(you know, online arcade versus gameplay). This may sound like a dumb question to some, but I think Compo4All is just about the coolest thing I've ever done in gaming over a 30+ yearhistory. I would feel kind of pissed off if something like this is available everywhere and I never gave it a try

If so, how are they compared to Compo4All. If none exist, why don't we offer this to the masses somehow, I'm sure it could only help the Pandora down the line right?

Chris

 

[b_o_b]

I have not heard of any Mame online competition like c4all and I also would advise against making it available on other platforms. By keeping it small and only for this niche community it will not be visible on any unwanted radar. 

There are some retroleagues http://s11.zetaboards.com/RetroLeague/index/  http://www.yakyak.org/viewforum.php?f=24 pretty sure those members would also be interested in c4all and maybe some might be interested enough to buy a Pandora

 

[skeezix]

I certainly intend on adding some more options to the server during its rewrite, so that it can store multiple source platforms, and do reporting based on various combinations.

ie: Right now the client specifies its platform (Pandora, say), and the server just has one collection; I could easily run multiple servers, and then add a proxy that sends to an appropriate server based on platform.. but thats a lot of goofery, and doesn't add too much.

Instead, my plan is that when queryign the server, you put in a scope; "show me pandora, this month", or "show me pandora, raspberry-pi, PC, for this month'; so that you can see your scores in ass large a field as you want; just yourself, or various combinations of platforms.

Whenever I get that done, we can go for larger announcements..

.. but there are a couple small scale leagues like this out there, I think; (ie: I didn't know about them at all until I did C4A, but I do think there is some point to point stuff ou tthere; nothign centralized though, but a few tricks to let peopel have highscore saving for their home arcades and such.)

jeff

 

[pmprog]

I certainly intend on adding some more options to the server during its rewrite, so that it can store multiple source platforms, and do reporting based on various combinations.

Now that I'm getting back up to speed with the Tournament Hub rewrite, could probably do with catching up with you on your server changes. I'm assuming you've stuck with http and json at least?

 

[skeezix]

Nothign changed yet.. RL has been really kicking me around lately :/

But yes, protocol will not be changing much; probably additional params on the pulls, to scope the result set.

jeff

 

[Kumaki]

Haven't even had a chance to touch C4A this month at all...been a very busy month, just last night I got back from Louisville, Kentucky...an almost eleven hour drive.

Did it in one piece, and with just one driver...I am effing exhausted!!

 

[foxblock]

What is the best practice of submitting scores to the c4a server (from a game developer's point of view)?

Should the game developer try to aggregate and cache scores and only submit the best one after a session (like NubNub does) or submit every new highscore (like Super Hexagon does) or only submit scores manually on the user's input?

Every one of these methods has some advantages and disadvantages and it's probably preference, but defining some "best practice" way would be a good idea I think.

This information should also be added to the wiki.

 

[skeezix]

What is the best practice of submitting scores to the c4a server (from a game developer's point of view)?

Should the game developer try to aggregate and cache scores and only submit the best one after a session (like NubNub does) or submit every new highscore (like Super Hexagon does) or only submit scores manually on the user's input?

Every one of these methods has some advantages and disadvantages and it's probably preference, but defining some "best practice" way would be a good idea I think.

This information should also be added to the wiki.

I always figured it would be up to the developer .. it may vary by game; as long as any one game is consistent, that'd work (since cross comparison of scores between games makes no sense.) But as you say, maybe a set of guidelines? That sounds hard... Anyway, my thought was always 'end of session'; for arcade games it was sending up a whole table, and most people didn't mind if they.. achieved 10 entries onto the board of 5 slots, and then at end of session that 5 slot board was sent up and integrated; the fact they'd lost 5 of their scores wasn't important, since they'd beaten them off anyway. However, if you wanted higher resolution, and every single score posted.. server doesn't care obviously. So in this case, it leads to...

Pseudo-related, its probably not great to spend a lot of time working on offline caching of scores (since every game doing it independantly coudl create bugs and such), but obviously I've not gotten off my rear to add it into the official 'sc client'; but thats where it should be (without putting thought to it, I'd just figured that since we decided we wanted to do it, then in the c4a-mame appdata dir (which is really the c4a appdata dir as well, despite the name), putting in a queue dir. Something like 'QUEUEDIRname/gamename/timestamp-random.q' or something; then when sc gets an order, instead of doing it live, add it to queue dir, and then invoke a routine that iterates the q dir and feeds them up in order to the server. Not too big a change, but should automate things nicely.)

Perhaps sc-client needs a 'queue only' option on the command line, and a 'flush queue' option; this wya, for performance, you could send -queueonly and it'd stick it in the dir withotu hitting the serever (taking a few seconds due to pandora slower wifi say), and then at the end or controlled time (end of session shell script wrapper, say), invoke the 'flush queue' option and have it due its business; or let c4a-launcher do it. HMM!

Anyway, adding queueing to 'sc client' may be the way to go.. to safely handle offline play, and to allow performance enhancements for higher resolution score submission...

jeff

 

[pmprog]

Hmmm, I was thinking I could grab the queue locally and read scores, but I guess if the queue is flushed by the time the game actually ends, I'll miss my chance of grabbing the scores

Unless the queue isn't removed and kept somewhere I can access without having to download.

 

[skeezix]

Since you're already talking to the server, probably best to get it from there; ie: don't get too cozy on assumptions about locations of things, since it binds you too tightly (breaking when things inevitably change.) Stick to published interface, and bug me as needed to update it

jeff

 

[porg]

Is the repo version of C4AMAME the same as you posted in here yet? (ie supports command line launching)

Never did update the repo.

Good, that I read about this this in the "tournament hub" thread by incident!

Bug reports:

Endless syncing prevents game launch: I used the most recent C4A-Mame from the repo, and the first time it worked nice, but on consecutive sessions, launching games became mostly impossible. When you clicked "launch", it synced once, than again, …again…, caught in an endless sync loop. Only a few games were still possibly to run normal (i.e. Asteriods AFAIR).

Changing keyboard focus beyond the fold does not change the viewport: Left/right switches focus between game list (left) and showcase (right). Fine! Up/down within the game list cycles focus through the game list. But as soon as you put focus to a game beyond the fold, the viewport does not change accordingly (to bring the focused element into the visible area).

Feature suggestions:

In the game list remove the redundant "'Launch' <gamename>".

So instead of:


Launch Aaaa
Launch Bbbbbbb
Launch Ccccc

Better create this listing:


Launch:
Aaaa
Bbbbbbb
Ccccc
Follow-up:

So are some of these bugs fixed in the aforementioned forum posted PND? Link appreciated!

Or even better: Update the repo, so that not only insiders benefit from this update, but everyone. Thanks!