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HI-SCORE: worldwide sharing & public competitions (easy way)
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torino:

--- Quote from: CheffoJeffo on June 09, 2011, 12:59:19 pm ---Sounds familiar ... I guess you are back to ignoring the realities that people quite rightly point out.

Let's see how you spiral out of control this time.

--- End quote ---

What are you talking about? What do you imagine I am trying to do here and what is wrong about it, what's your problem with it, what's your complaint about? -- You either like the idea and want to help realize it, or not. That's it, there is no argument. So even though many like the idea no one here seem interested enough to test it and actually do something, other than talk about it, and that's where I give up. End of story, now forget about it.
torino:

--- Quote from: cotmm68030 on June 09, 2011, 02:27:34 pm ---And keep in mind, if I start my game before you write your new high score, my new scores will overwrite yours.

--- End quote ---

No, that's nonsense. Shared web-folder is up running, go ahead and test it.


1.) Top menu of any folder: Tools->Map Network Drive...

Drive Z: -> http://www.drivehq.com/webdav/OnlineMAME
Username: onlinemame / Password: letmeplay


2.) MAME .ini change: hiscore_directory       Z:\Hi-Score
torino:

--- Quote from: chillinwater on June 09, 2011, 02:45:04 pm ---He already unravelled "spiralled out of control" over in the Hyperspin forums and quickly derailed that thread. (and then trashed the shared .hi files in his competitors program to prove his point)

--- End quote ---

Hahahaa! No. I simply put a different dkong.hi file in my local "Hi" folder in order to test HyperScore and see how it parses files, merges and syncs local folders with server. To my surprise I found out there was no any parsing, merging and syncing but the program was simply uploading and downloading .hi files from server to local folder and back by simply overwriting older files with new ones. There was also no cheat checking, file protection or account security, no any SQL database, nothing done on server side, nothing done on client side, but the guy somehow managed to convince people his program has all those features, so when I explained I can see exactly what his program is doing and what is not doing, that is actually not working properly and is just more complicated version of "shared web-folder", they deleted the whole thread. Strange, eh? And now you think I am the boogeyman for giving you equally capable but simpler solution which actually works? Marvellous!
torino:

--- Quote from: Sjaak on June 09, 2011, 01:16:01 pm ---I like the idea. But using a shared folder where everyone can modify/delete the .hi files is a bad idea. Sure with a couple of users it will work, but you will get deadlock issues when more people start using it.

--- End quote ---

Why do you think there would be "deadlock" issues? The files are open for writing just briefly at the end of the game, so if two or more users happen to finish the same game in the same time some of them will experience a bit longer delay (MAME glitch) while waiting for others to finish their update first. That's all, there should not be any file corruption or anything else. The server is up and running, try it, test it.

In any case I agree, if this was to become popular there would need to be account security and proper file protection together with backup system in order to prevent illegal updates or deletion of the database even if only by accident. However, there is just so much we can do with free file sharing services. Ideally we need active server that can run scripts, and that's not free as far as I know, though Saint could possibly provide a shared folder on this server with no much fuss, together with limited access for already existing forum accounts.

So anyway, until someone comes along with free solution for a real server we are limited, but limited only security-wise, so if we were really interested we could start playing right now, then slowly improve it as/if interest grows, and even if we could not find proper free server we could still regulate and resolve all the issues, less securely though, by implementing it all on a client instead of server side.


I want to underline that "security" here has nothing to do with some potential risk for client computers, the risk here is only about keeping the database safe and clean, possibly monitor cheating. Sharing scoreboard and publishing your records is no higher risk than sharing on-line forum and posting your messages right here in this thread.



--- Quote ---But again, the idea to centralize hi scores is great and with a bit of work you could:


* Have bigger hi score tables (top 100).
* Have daily, weekly, monthly hi score tables to make it easier to beat hi scores.
* Link the hi scores to an alias instead of just 3 characters.
* Store screenshots of the hi scores.
But you would need a couple of things to do that...(switching to software architect mode)

a website (obviously), hosting, some sort of database to store all scores and some sort of application programming interface to store the hi scores in the system from the client.

--- End quote ---

Yes, I can do all that, with proper server or even without it, but I can't test it alone, nor do I want to play with myself. We have a start, we have usable server and we can start playing right now. You find me 20 people interested to play and test it and I will incorporate everything else, deal?
newmanfamilyvlogs:

--- Quote from: torino on June 09, 2011, 07:33:11 pm ---
--- Quote from: cotmm68030 on June 09, 2011, 02:27:34 pm ---And keep in mind, if I start my game before you write your new high score, my new scores will overwrite yours.

--- End quote ---

No, that's nonsense. Shared web-folder is up running, go ahead and test it.


1.) Top menu of any folder: Tools->Map Network Drive...

Drive Z: -> http://www.drivehq.com/webdav/OnlineMAME
Username: onlinemame / Password: letmeplay


2.) MAME .ini change: hiscore_directory       Z:\Hi-Score

--- End quote ---

Mame only writes the .hi on exit.

9:00 user a starts a game and loads game.hi with a top score of 100.
9:01 user b starts a game and loads game.hi with a top score of 100.
9:10 user a scores 500 and exits the game, writing a new game.hi
9:15 user b's mame is unaware of the new game.hi and scores 300.
9:16 user b also scores 400 and exits. Mame Overwrites game.hi with the table containing user b's two scores
9:20 user c starts a game and never sees user a's score.   
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