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Octavian has updated his Arcade Game Playing Guide Site and links to MARP all over the place to show the high scores for the games which he describes.
Had some hiccups with the script fighting with the server, but it's all sorted out now.
Somebody (I forget who) asked for a new feature quite a while back. They wanted to be able to specify the URL of the main frame from the frames URL. I've added this feature now, so you can set your MARP bookmark to be something like this (change the 'prefix=' and 'passwd=' bits to reflect your login and password):http://marp.retrogames.com/index.cgi?mode=frames&mode2=search&prefix=yourprefix&passwd=yourpasswd&per_game=1&sort=date_rev&tourn=1Note, use 'mode=frames' to make the frames appear, and 'mode2=...' to tell the script what page to put in the main frame. All the other values are used in the main frame as well. The example above will show the tournament-mode banner in the top frame, and the highest score for each game in the lower frame, with the most recent uploads shown first.
I added a new link to the tournament page. It's labelled 'download' and allows you to download a single zip file which contains the 12 tournament recordings which currently hold first place. The download is just under 1 megabyte at the moment, mainly to due the Gyruss and Galaga recordings being so long, so if you just want to watch BBH's 5k Combat School recording I would suggest that it's best to download it on its own.
I put up all the old DOS MAME executables which are capable of recording on the diffs page.
Oh happy day! I finally got the MAME 0.35 games in the database, along with the updated clone definitions. I guess now we're ready for 0.36 beta 1, right? Please tell me about any problems with the stuff I've put in the database, or any games which need splitting up into sub-games... Cheers!
I've been playing far too much thing. Maybe I'll see you there!I'll probably finish off the update tonight when I get back from the pub. Please excuse any speeling mistakes caused by the lack of sobriety.
I've been writing new features in the script so that it will be much easier to update for new versions in future.
I still didn't finish getting the new MAME 0.35 games updated properly. All the new games are there, but none of the renaming (short or long names) has been done yet. I have 2 excuses for this:
Added a link to Alan Kwan's Psychic 5 Strategy Guide on the MARP Links Page. Well - it's only fair, 'cos he has a couple of links back here...
Updated for MAME 0.35 final release (the fixed version - forget the first 'final' broken version).These games are new:
these two games were deleted:actfancj "Act-Fancer Cybernetick Hyper Weapon (Japan?)" arkangc "Arkanoid (Game Corporation bootleg)" arknoidj "Arkanoid (Japan)" atlants2 "Battle of Atlantis (set 2)" cottong "Cotocoto Cottong" klaxj "Klax (Japan)" machomou "Macho Mouse" mbomberj "Muscle Bomber (Japan)" ponpoko "Ponpoko" sctionza "Section Z (set 2)" sf2jb "Street Fighter II - The World Warrior (Japan 910214)" sfzch "Street Fighter ZERO (Japan CPS Changer)" smooncrs "Super Moon Cresta" starcas "Star Castle (version 3)" vulgus2 "Vulgus (set 2)" zaxxonb "Jackson"these games have had their long names changed:gcastle "Golden Castle"these games have had their short names changed:3wonderj "Three Wonders (Japan)" -> "Wonder 3 (Japan)" actfancr "Act Fancer" -> "Act-Fancer Cybernetick Hyper Weapon (US?)" arkanoi2 "Arkanoid - Revenge of DOH (World?)" -> "Arkanoid - Revenge of DOH (World)" arknoidu "Arkanoid (USA)" -> "Arkanoid (US)" atlantis "Battle of Atlantis" -> "Battle of Atlantis (set 1)" dwj "Tenchi o Kurau" -> "Tenchi wo Kurau" indytemp "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom" -> "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (set 1)" insectx "Insector X (World?)" -> "Insector X (World)" maglord "Magician Lord" -> "Magician Lord (set 1)" maglordh "Magician Lord (Home version)" -> "Magician Lord (set 2)" pacmanbl "Pac Man (bootleg on Pisces hardware)" -> "Pac-Man (bootleg on Pisces hardware)" sectionz "Section Z" -> "Section Z (set 1)" sf2 "Street Fighter II - The World Warrior (World rev B)" -> "Street Fighter II - The World Warrior (World 910214)" sf2a "Street Fighter II - The World Warrior (US rev A)" -> "Street Fighter II - The World Warrior (US 910206)" sf2b "Street Fighter II - The World Warrior (US rev B)" -> "Street Fighter II - The World Warrior (US 910214)" sf2e "Street Fighter II - The World Warrior (US rev E)" -> "Street Fighter II - The World Warrior (US 910228)" sf2j "Street Fighter II - The World Warrior (Japan)" -> "Street Fighter II - The World Warrior (Japan 911210)" slapbtjp "Slap Fight (Japanese bootleg)" -> "Slap Fight (Japan bootleg)" striderj "Strider (Japan)" -> "Strider Hiryu (Japan)" terracre "Terra Cresta (YM3526 set 2)" -> "Terra Cresta (YM3526 set 1)" tnzs2 "Newzealand Story 2, The (World?)" -> "Newzealand Story 2, The (World)" tnzsb "Newzealand Story, The (World? bootleg)" -> "Newzealand Story, The (World, bootleg)" uniwars "Uniwars" -> "UniWar S" vulgus "Vulgus (US?)" -> "Vulgus (set 1)" wofj "Tenchi o Kurau 2 (Japan)" -> "Tenchi wo Kurau II - Sekiheki no Tatakai (Japan)"and these games had both long and short names changed:btime -> btimem "Burger Time (Midway)" btimed -> btime "Burger Time (Data East set 1)" btimed2 -> btime2 "Burger Time (Data East set 2)" empire -> esb "Empire Strikes Back, The" mbomber -> mbombrd "Muscle Bomber Duo (World)" mbomberj -> mbombrdj "Muscle Bomber Duo (Japan)" midres -> midresu "Midnight Resistance (US)" strhoops -> strhoop "Street Hoop / Street Slam / Dunk Dream"billiard -> hustlerb "Billiards, The" -> "Video Hustler (bootleg)" midresj -> midres "Midnight Resistance (Japan)" -> "Midnight Resistance (World)" ponpoko -> ponpokov "Ponpoko" -> "Ponpoko (Venture Line)" pool -> billiard "Pool" -> "Billiards, The" starcas -> starcas1 "Star Castle" -> "Star Castle (older)"
I didn't update for MAME 0.35 yet, so you'll not be able to upload recordings of the new games yet. I'll try to do it soon...
Welcome to all the new visitors who followed Gridle's link on the MAME page to this site. Over the weekend we were getting around 3 times more visitors than we usually do. Thanks for the hits, and the uploads, people! :o)
I keep getting email bounces when the script tries to email Arron Wendl. Do you have a good email address, Arron?
There are 10 games in the tournament, and you can upload recordings for as many or as few of these games as you like. The scoring works by counting how many different players have entered the tournament all together, and awarding that number of points for the winning score for each game, one less to 2nd place, one less to 3rd place, and so on. These are all totalled up and shown on the tournament leaderboard. Check out the link to GameBoy's page (which you'll see once you go to tournament mode) for detailed rules and stuff.
The first MARP tournament is now underway. The voting is (nearly) over, and scores have started to trickle in. This site now has 2 modes - 'tournament' and 'regular'. If you see a 'tournament' link in the top left corner of the screen, click on it to get in to 'tournament mode', and enjoy! Otherwise, you're already in 'tournament mode', and can click the 'MARP' link in the top left corner to get to 'regular' mode.
I've been writing some extensions to the script to allow the tournament to happen next month. Nothing like leaving it until the last moment, eh? You'll see there's a new link at the top left of the banner frame once you've logged in now. If you click it, the top frame changes into 'tournament mode', and all the links there relate to the tournament. The top left link will then become 'MARP', which you can click to get back to the regular MARP site. It's only there for testing at the moment - please have a play with it and let me know if you can break it...
Changed the leaderboard scoring back to treat clones and original games separately, in the face of several complaints. Wasn't there some kind of vote on what to do with clones some time ago? Did anyone ever count the votes? It seems now that most people want clones and original games treated the same, although a few people argue for clones to be given less importance, or removed altogether.
Updated for release candidate 2.These games are new:
these games have had their long names changed:demonwld "Demon's World / Horror Story" fightfev "Fight Fever / Crystal Legacy" fshark "Flying Shark (World)" fsharkbt "Flying Shark (bootleg)" hishouza "Hishou Zame (Japan)" indytem3 "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (set 3)" irrmaze "Irritating Maze / Ultra Denryu Iraira Bou, The" liquidku "Liquid Kids (US)" makaimuc "Makai-Mura (Revision C)" makaimug "Makai-Mura (Revision G)" mizubaku "Mizubaku Daibouken (Japan)" pyros "Pyros (US)" rallybik "Rally Bike / Dash Yarou" searchar "SAR - Search And Rescue (US)" shocktr2 "Shock Troopers - 2nd Squad" skyshark "Sky Shark (US)" streets2 "Street Smart (US version 2)" streetsj "Street Smart (Japan version 1)" streetsm "Street Smart (US version 1)" terracrb "Terra Cresta (YM3526 set 2)" wardner "Wardner (World)" wardnerj "Wardner no Mori (Japan)"these games have had their short names changed:gladiatr "Gladiator" -> "Gladiator (US)" gng "Ghosts'n Goblins (World?)" -> "Ghosts'n Goblins (World? set 1)" growl "Growl" -> "Growl (World)" jungleh "Jungle Hunt" -> "Jungle Hunt (US)" junglek "Jungle King" -> "Jungle King (Japan?)" ktiger "Kyukyoku Tiger" -> "Kyukyoku Tiger (Japan)" liquidk "Liquid Kids" -> "Liquid Kids (World)" majest12 "Majestic Twelve - The Space Invaders Part IV" -> "Majestic Twelve - The Space Invaders Part IV (Japan)" ogonsiro "Ohgon no Siro" -> "Ohgon no Siro (Japan)" powj "P.O.W. - Prisoners of War (Japan)" -> "Datsugoku - Prisoners of War (Japan)" rastan "Rastan (World?)" -> "Rastan (World)" rygarj "Rygar (Japan)" -> "Argus no Senshi (Japan)" ssi "Super Space Invaders '91" -> "Super Space Invaders '91 (World)" terracre "Terra Cresta (YM3526)" -> "Terra Cresta (YM3526 set 2)" twincobr "Twin Cobra (Taito)" -> "Twin Cobra (World)" twincobu "Twin Cobra (Romstar)" -> "Twin Cobra (US)"and these games have had both their short and long names changed:1943jap -> 1943j "1943 - The Battle of Midway (Japan)" ccjap -> cclimbrj "Crazy Climber (Japan)" digdug -> digdugat "Dig Dug (Atari)" gngjap -> makaimur "Makai-Mura" japirem -> gteikoku "Gingateikoku No Gyakushu" mazeh -> meikyuh "Meikyuu Hunter G (Japan)" mekyosen -> makyosen "Makyou Senshi (Japan)"gngcross -> gnga "Ghosts'n Goblins (Cross)" -> "Ghosts'n Goblins (World? set 2)"
Had a whole bunch of emails from people about various bugs I'd added to the script. They're all fixed now, so I'm ready for the next bunch of problems when you discover them. :o)
Got in to work this morning to find that I'd left the page broken all last night. So I fixed it.
The search page doesn't check all the clones - so if the game you've played has a clone which has a higher high score than the game you've played, your actual leaderboard points will be lower than the number which the search page reports. This will probably be fixed in time.
The search page is a little closer to reflecting the actual points that each recording is awarded. It knows about how ties work now. How ties work: if 6 people share the highest score, and you're 7th with 99% of the high score, you take quite a hit on your score, since there are 6 people above you. You don't just lose 15% of your score, since you're not really 2nd, even though you could argue that you have the 2nd highest score (since all the others are sharing 1st).
Note that the new box on the leaderboard page, like all the other search boxes on MARP treats the text you type as a regular expression. If you type 'pac' in the box, you'll get all games with 'pac' in their short name being scored - a substring search. If you put '^pac', you'll get all games which start with 'pac' - a substring search, but anchored at the beginning, and if you put 'pac$', you'll get all games which end with 'pac' - a substring search, but anchored at the end. If you want to only get the game called exactly 'pac', then put '^pac$' - the '^' and '$' in combination specify that the string you type is exactly what you're searching for, not a substring. Regular expressions can do more than this - but this isn't the place to witter on about them... If you want the full story, look here.
I added a box at the bottom on the leaderboard page where you can type the name of a game to limit the scoring to. This is so that I can test that the leaderboard is doing what it's supposed to. If there's anything in the box then the script will display its workings - so if you want to check that it's doing the right thing, type a game name in that last box and see what gets printed.
It's also now possible to ask the leaderboard script to ignore clone games when calculating scores, or to merge all clone game scores with the parent game, effectively treating all the games as one. Currently, the script only knows about the clones which are listed from a 'mame -listclones' command - it doesn't know that 'pacman-fast' is a clone of 'pacman', but I'll tell it that soon. For now, the points are biased towards people who have multiple recordings on the games which I've split into multiple categories, like the pangs and the bowlings. I think they need merging as well, really. What do you think?
Although the leaderboard now awards the points differently, the search page doesn't know about the change yet, so the display of points shown on the search page isn't correct any more.
I've altered the leaderboard so that it treats tied scores equally. It doesn't matter who uploaded the score first.
Here's a bit of a shock... if we ignore clones, or merge their scores with the parent games, then BBH drops into 3rd place, and JoustGod is the new leader!
OK - I think it's working alright now. If you see any error messages or strange things please email me about it.
I've made quite a lot of changes to the script code without being able to test them - so now I'm uploading them to MARP to see what they do... Hopefully it will work straight away, but it doesn't usually. I'll add a note here when I think it's working OK.
Well - I tried to go out drinking, but by the time I got there, my 'friends' had moved on to some other pub... So I finished the search page code... :o)
I started adding a feature to the search page that will allow you to only list original games, or only list clones, but then somebody phoned me and told me that I was a sad bastard for working on a web page when I should be out drinking. He's right, of course.
I think the script understands the funny gundealr scores now - it just uses the part after the hypen to calculate the score on the leaderboard.
Fixed a little bug in the script which caused it to fail if you searched for any games which didn't have any recordings.
Also, the search pages now display the number of leaderboard points that each recording awards its submitter, and allows you to sort the search results in order of these awarded points.
I'm done - I think. There are a few changes to the script. The leaderboard scoring was changed again. Whereas before there was a guaranteed 15% gap between 1st and 2nd, and no gap between any other positions, there's now a gap between every pair of positions. The idea is to make it worth your while to attack the score that's immediately above yours. The gaps between positions get smaller as you get further away from 1st place.
I'm upgrading the CGI scripts at the moment. If you get error messages, please just bear with me. I'll drop another note here when I'm done...
We recently reached the 5000 recordings level!
I added a tournament page, which was contributed by Gameboy9, who is organising a tournament here at the MARP page.
I've improved the leaderboard a little further. Now it displays two different rankings on the same page.
I have updated the page with the new games from MAME 0.35 release candidate 1...Note that there are 2 games in this release that are both called 'digdug'. One of them should be called 'digdugat', and that's what I'll call it in the database, but I don't think it's possible to play it in this release.
These games are new:
these games had their short names changed:alcon "Alcon" appoooh "Appoooh" azurian "Azurian Attack" blockj "Block Block (Japan)" cworld "Capcom World (Japan)" devilfsg "Devil Fish (Galaxian hardware, bootleg?)" digdug2a "Dig Dug II (set 2)" digdugb "Dig Dug (set 2)" dinoj "Cadillacs Kyouryuu-Shinseiki (Japan)" eyes2 "Eyes (Techstar Inc.)" freeze "Freeze" hotshock "Hot Shocker" levers "Levers" lkage "Legend of Kage, The" lkageb "Legend of Kage, The (bootleg)" mars "Mars" marukin "Super Marukin-Ban" mgakuen "Mahjong Gakuen" mgakuen2 "Mahjong Gakuen 2 Gakuen-chou no Fukushuu" mhavocp "Major Havoc (prototype)" nebulbee "Nebulous Bee" neocup98 "Neo-Geo Cup '98 - The Road to the Victory" newsin7 "New Sinbad 7" pang3 "Pang! 3 (Japan)" pkladies "Poker Ladies" pleiadbl "Pleiads (bootleg)" popbounc "Pop 'n Bounce / Gapporin" qixb "Qix (set 3)" qsangoku "Quiz Sangokushi (Japan)" qtono2 "Quiz Tonosama no Yabou 2 Zenkoku-ban (Japan)" quizdai2 "Quiz Meintantei Neo Geo - Quiz Daisousa Sen Part 2" quizdais "Quiz Daisousa Sen - The Last Count Down" route16b "Route 16 (bootleg)" saturn "Saturn" sdodgeb "Super Dodge Ball / Kunio no Nekketsu Toukyuu Densetsu" sf2accp2 "Street Fighter II' - Champion Edition (Accelerator Pt.II)" snowbroj "Snow Bros. - Nick & Tom (Japan)" spelunkr "Spelunker"these games had both their names changed:jhunt -> jungleh "Jungle Hunt" superpac -> superpcm "Super Pac-Man (Midway)"and these games have had their long names changed:digdugnm -> digdug "Dig Dug (Namco)" -> "Dig Dug (set 1)" superpcn -> superpac "Super Pac-Man (Namco)" -> "Super Pac-Man"astrof "Astro Fighter" -> "Astro Fighter (set 1)" bzone "Battle Zone" -> "Battle Zone (set 1)" bzone2 "Battle Zone (alternate version)" -> "Battle Zone (set 2)" digdug2 "Dig Dug II" -> "Dig Dug II (set 1)" dogfight "Dogfight" -> "Dog Fight" eyes "Eyes" -> "Eyes (Digitrex Techstar)" hatena "Adventure Quiz 2 Hatena no Dai-Bouken (Japan)" -> "Adventure Quiz 2 Hatena Hatena no Dai-Bouken (Japan)" kuniokub "Nekketsu Kouha Kunio Kun (Japan bootleg)" -> "Nekketsu Kouha Kunio-kun (Japan bootleg)" pleiads "Pleiads (Tehkan, bootleg)" -> "Pleiads (Tehkan)"
So what do you think? Be sure to express your opinions and suggestions on the MARP board!
I notice now that there are a lot less ties on the leaderboard, which has to be a good thing.
As an example, check out American's scores. He doesn't have any top 3 scores, but still gets a few leaderboard points. He has a few scores which are below 30% of the top scores on those games, but he also has one at 59% and one at 39% of the top scores, and so he claims 29 plus 9 points (after taking off the 30% 'Angry factor'), giving him 38 leaderboard points, and a leaderboard placing of 139th!
When you see any score which isn't the top score for a game, you see the score expressed as a percentage of the top score written next to it.
I implemented Angry's suggestion. He wrote:My idea for a percentage based leaderboard is this: 1st place gets an even 100% for the score. 2nd place and below earn their percentage of the top score - minus 25%. This means that if you are in 2nd place by only 50 points, your percentage will be 74.9% or something similar. (Percentage could easily be adjusted to any percentage, even 10% or 50%) If a player's score falls below 25% of the top score, the player will not be rewarded with any leaderboard points for that score.I used 30% instead of 25%, but it's adjustable via the leaderboard form. Play with it and tell me what you think. Note: if you change it to 10%, then BBH isn't top of the table any more...
The leaderboard scoring is now additive, rather than averaged.
The leaderboard defaults to the 'experimental percentage mode' thing. I'll eventually have both the old and new scoring mechanisms on the same page.
I changed the scripts a little, following the discussion on this thread of the MARP message board: