I already suggested that with John, but seems like this hack is a totally different ball game since it's involved time, winning, and score system.

How it's being scored? 2 human against each other, but says 1000 points for winner, still doesn't fair if one is too good and one is too bad.

www.clubxiangqi.com is the largest chinese chess, or xiangqi, they also have chess. The player starts with 1500 points. Then if he wins against 1800 player, he goes up 20 points, but if he wins against 1550, he goes up only 10. Would I suggest a seperate system for chess? no, it would be too complicated, but something to think about :).

Another suggestion, excluding any chess game, is having a universal scoring system. This will show the score based on/accumulated from personal best. Then show the top members overall of ALL games. This has to be balance also since the score system in every game is different, i.e simon has 1 point and Tetris has thousands points. But we can translate the score of everygame into one universal point, and base on that :). This way will encourage member to play all games and even if he/she doesn't get any trophy in each, he/she still has chance to get a trophy in overall table.

Updated: Oops, I thought I was posting here: https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=60400 . Sorry.

Right then, now we get to the point which I knew would come up sooner or later.

First of all, I got nothing for this hack. I did all the work,and released it to the community for no reason other than wanting to share something. Yes, I've offered to give support for this hack. But my life is not solely dedicated to providing support for people who want everything handed to them on a plate.

I'm not saying this is you, but you have to realise - 90% of the people with problems simply didn't read the instructions, although they claimed to be experienced webmasters. Another 9% of people didn't bother looking in the first post for a fix before posting their problem. After looking through the changes people had made there was nearly always a mistake in their code - regardless of their attitude as a master of vB hacking.

Now, if you've really been through everything properly and there is no fault with the code, there's a problem that I'm willing to help with. (The remaining 1%, which I guess you fall under.) But people say to me "there's a problem with the scoring system", and ask me to fix it. Do you see the problem here? Not only am I unable to replicate the problem, the only information I'm given is that "it doesn't work for some people on rare occasions".

If there's no more information that you can give me, the only thing I can think of off the top of my head is that this is affecting people with slower net connections. As a result, Flash is taking longer to communicate with the server, causing a higher ping and invalidating the score.

To see if this is the problem, open up the gamesessions table in phpMyAdmin and sort all records by the "ping" field. Check to see what your highest ping is... if you have a lot of records with values above 4500, that's likely to be your problem. To fix it:

In arcade.php, find:
Replace 4500 with a number greater than your highest ping. I wouldn't recommend going above 15000.

I hope this helps, let me know if it doesn't.

And other than the above, I just want to point out that I am self employed. I have to work to survive, and every spare minute I get I put into the Arcade. With game conversions, I paid $100 which I can't afford for a piece of software to enable me to make swf files compatible with the Arcade. All the spare time I get (when I'm not working or giving tech support) goes into game conversions... sorry for the delay, but I'm going as fast as I can.

installed wit no problems, thanks for the great hack

press install..

Wolfy, are you using a different style to the rest of your members? How many styles do you have on your forums?

Edit: Looks like Wolfy solved his problem.

John your efforts and constant support for this great hack are very much appreciated. It just seems like all the members with low post counts/new members are having problems without reading or atleast searching the thread for the answer.

For hacks such as this i think there should be a min post count before you can download it, such a hack deserves lots of gratitude. Ok i know that sounds unfair to new members but all the problems i have had with this hack (all of 1) i solved by reading/searching then found it was ME that was in the wrong. Time has gone into making this hack and testing it so atleast spend some time reading/searching the thread for the answer to your problems...

* SnowBot gets off his hig horse

What's the chances of someone coming up with a version of Centipede for this hack, that would be cool?

:squareeyed:

great hack installed it no problem!..........ive got one question though, is it possibe to set it so members can only acces the arcade after they have posted a certain amount of times?

We appreciate all the time you've spent on this hack and on support issues John. :)

There's what appears to be a bug in the system with regards to challenges and the champion. If a user wins the top score of the game through a challenge, the medal does not appear in his posting (in the forum, under his name). It's however reflected correctly on in the Arcade high score for that game.

User reporting bug on my site: http://www.spug.net/showthread.php?t=51060
High score for Maeda Path: http://www.spug.net/arcade.php?do=scores&name=maeda

roychang is the winner but he won it through a challenge. He's correctly listed as the winner in the Arcade. However, in his posting (http://www.spug.net/showthread.php?t=51060), you'll notice that the title does not appear under his name. The title appears under the name of the user dm318, who got second place in Maeda Path playing the normal game (instead of the challenge).

Very well spotted, thanks for the bug report. :)

The problem is that arcadeupdate.php (the Arcade cron script) doesn't take into account challenge results when updating the champion listings.

The problem has been fixed, and the zip file has been updated. If you're fixing this bug, simply download the latest zip and overwrite /includes/cron/arcadeupdate.php with Files/includes/cron/arcadeupdate.php.

Coming soon. :)

very well spotted :)

upped new file :)

great john :D, any idea on timescale coz its annoying me when people register to use the arcade and dont post at all heh

/me sends a little present to John via paypal

Thanks, appreciated. :)

Yeah I did the same thing and got the same error. Human mistake. Read the instructions again more carefully.

how can I delete all scores of e.g. 'target'?

There'll be a feature for deleting scores from specfic games in the next release.

Or you can just run this query:

thanks John

Thank you very much, good work.
/me clicks install

2 people have tied on a game and in the high scores it lists "member1" as #1 but it gives "member2" the trophy. The screen shows the 2 members tied but the 2nd person received the trophy.

Installed The game without a hitch,

Thank you for all the work that has obviously gone into this and the awe-inspiring level of support you are providing for a free piece of software.

2nd person prolly did it in less time

Okay...and thats fine...I'm not arguing WHO should have gotten the trophy...I'm arguing that in the High Scores it shows "Member1" has the top score but it gives the trophy to "Member2"...

First of all, thanks for the help with this, I have never for one moment said I do not 100% appreciate the work and effort you've put into this and I am fully aware that it is a completely free hack and that you get nothing in return except for the beer money being sent to you and that you also have to fit it in around work and doing other stuff. I appreciate that, I really do, i am self employed myself and understand it completely. I wasn't having a go at you, It's just very frustrating when a post count seems to be being what is used to signify how much knowledge a user obviously has.

I've spent the best part of five days running through every single edited template, the arcade.php file, the other files and the database to try and figure the problem out for myself and it is simply because I keep hitting a blank with it that i've asked for help with this one problem.

Anyway, I tried as you suggested with the ping timout, setting it at various times from 4500 right through to the maximum 15000 you suggested and getting my high scoring players to play and see if the times would submit, unfortunately the exact same problem still keeps on continuosly happening.

Here is what is being submitted to the dbase:

That's with the ping timing set at 10000

I'm not sure what other info I could give you on this, i'll give what ever info is possibly needed.

If you help me fix it, i'll be putting a fair sized beer money donation forward if that helps.

I love his hack, it's wonderful, it's really giving my users a hell of a lot of added pleasure, it's just really frustrating not being able to find out what the source of the problem is so I can fix it.

Not a *huge* bug, but it's still a bug!

Will get it fixed soon(ish).

Detomah, what is the highest ping anyone has had during a game session?

Also, upon trying - how easily are you able to replicate this error? 1 in 2? Everytime?

Idea

How about having some time of posts = game play money system?

because users spend more time playing games then posting well some of them do, so what i have been thinking is that each post a user makes it gives them say 50p game playing money and then you can set how much a game costs to play once via the admin cp and if a user dont have the money they can not play to they have made a few posts that give them the money needed to play.

Also if someone top's the chart upon doing so they get awarded so much game play money.

Agreed. Defenitely not rush. Just wanted to make sure it wasn't a problem with just my boards.

The highest few recorded are as follows: 999.8 992.0 879.3 864.3 the average is around 150 to 300 though.

I can get certain users to replicate the error almost every single time they play, by getting certain highest scores on certain games. I've only actually been able to replicate it while playing Tetris or Curveball myself though.

also on the Challenge system you could but game play money bets on the game so say the bet is £5 to the winner the winner gets the £5 game play money and its taken away from the person that lost. not forgetting you can only bet has much as the person with the less game play money.

A great idea, fits in well with parts 2 and 3 of this hack too. :)

My only concern is that it would kind of be stepping on the toes of Lesane's Store Hack..

Would you be willing to let me have a look around on your server? (i.e. check settings, files, templates, etc.)

If it would help sure. :)

Not really because people will only be able to use the money to play games in the arcade.

from the day i installed it what was day or so after you posted it i have one user with this info:

Number of game sessions recorded: 532
Total time spent playing in the Arcade: 1674 minutes


1674 minutes works out to 28 hours almost lol

Nice hack, i'm impressed... I wont use it because it does not fit the theme of my new forum, but very good regardless.... keep up the good work.

Yes I am using the lastest Arcade.php .. It seems that this only happens when a score is submitted, but I cant pin point the error just to that b/c I am getting this error verry often...

Any ideas?

This is one of the most awesome hacks, I have ever seen!

If you have an issue with the usergroups, check that global.php!

I love this hack! I can't thank you enough!

I have my settings where challenges count toward the High Score board...but right now if you get the top score via a challenge, you don't get the trophy. Is this a bug?