vbProArcade Beta 2
 

vbProArcade Beta 2

1/5/03: Beta 2 released
9/12/02: Beta 1.03 zip updated to include safe mode fix
9/3/02: Beta 1.03 released -- small bug fixes, see below
9/1/02: Beta 1 of vbProArcade has been posted. Please see below for installation instructions.


Background Information

vbProArcade is a fully-customizable Flash arcade add-on for vBulletin, complete with game-by-game scoreboards, forum integration, a "champions" system, statistics, and more.

This is an extensive hack that is still in BETA form, and I don't recommend installing it if you are not willing to work through potential issues and future updates/upgrades! I am working on making the installation instructions as easy as possible, but it will probably be some time before it is perfect.

Watch this post for updates as they happen, and check out screenshots from the list below. If you would like to see the hack in action, you may visit my Shadows of Namek forums. You will need to register to play, but you can view the scoreboards and the arcade itself as a guest.


Credits

This hack materialized thanks to work and help from a number of people and forums. Here they are:

• Original vbTetris Hack by Erwin Loh
• Original vbTetris Leaderboard Hack by John Warwick (john.eovie)
• One of my users, Simon Steel, for work on Flash coding/recoding
• The users of one of my forums, Shadows of Namek, for their extensive testing of the system
• And The Kryptonian for pre-release and release candidate installation testing.

Games

So far, there are FIVE GAMES that work correctly with this hack. They are:

Breakout
Pacman
Snake
Space Invaders
Tetris

All five .SWF files are included in the release archive.

There is now a Flash Games Development Thread for the purpose of modifying existing games to work with vbProArcade, or for creating new games to be compatible with vbProArcade. If you have a game that you wish to see modified but don't know how, post the .FLA source in that thread and hopefully somebody can assist you.


Installation Instructions

Download the file attached to this post, unzip it and familiarize yourself with the contents BEFORE doing anything.

There are TWO separate files worth reading, the Documentation and the Installation Instructions. I recommend that you read both BEFORE doing anything else.

Once you have done this, the instructions to be followed are contained in vbproarcade-install.txt. Follow them as precisely as possible. If you encounter an error somewhere, it is likely that you missed a step or made a small error. Please double-check your work BEFORE posting about problems here.

And it cannot be said enough: read that file before you do anything, and if you are unsure of something, please post your question(s) before attempting to install the hack.


Problems and Fixes/Workarounds (as of 1/5)

• None

Known Bugs/Limitations

Here is the list of stuff that I know does not work. I will be working towards correcting these bugs BEFORE adding new features for the next release.

• Netscape will allow you to play the games but not record scores
• If a user uses the "Back" button to go to the game screen, and does not refresh before playing, the score will result in a Security Violation. This is by design.

Screen Shots for Beta 2

Here is the list of posts from this thread that contain screen shots for the new version. Check them out!

• Main Arcade Screen: https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthrea...106#post292106
• Game Screen: https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthrea...107#post292107
• Game Over Screen: https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthrea...109#post292109
• Scoreboard: https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthrea...110#post292110
• Top Score Board: https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthrea...111#post292111
• Admin Modify Game: https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthrea...112#post292112
• Who's Online Display: https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthrea...113#post292113
• User Detail Screen: https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthrea...811#post337811
• Admin Score Editor: https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthrea...736#post338736
• Champ System in Postbit: https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthrea...745#post338745
• Modify Games in Admin CP (contracted): https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthrea...858#post389858
• Modify Games in Admin CP (expanded): https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthrea...859#post389859

Upcoming Features

This is the stuff that is in progress for future release:

• Complete Admin Panel Scoreboard Editor
• Additional integration with vB
• Even better Who's Online screen

Some have emailed or PM'd me asking if I would accept donations for my work on this hack, and yes, I certainly will, and any and all support is greatly appreciated. With over 2,000 lines of original PHP code, in addition to HTML and Flash work, I have spent a great deal of time developing and debugging the source for this, and it is a great feeling to have people like it so much that they want to give something back.

All donations received go directly back into supporting my websites and my design activities. You may click here to donate via Paypal. Note that donations are by no means required, and not donating does not mean you won't get support for the hack.

Last but not least, thanks for checking this out!

<i>NOTE: I apologize for the huge screenshots, but I left them full-size for clarity's sake, especially for some of the more detailed ones. If your browser re-sizes image to fit the screen, make sure you maximize them to read everything well. Look at the highlighted sections for points of interest...</i>

This is the main page of the Arcade (so far).

Beta 1.03 Text:

Planned improvements so far include scoreboard icons/links, admin-selectable "king" icons, and a seamless integration with vbStats to provide meaningful arcade statistics.

UPDATED FOR BETA 2:

Features added:

- mini-scoreboards for each game
- admin-selectable icons
- tool-tips all over the place, revealing even more info
- and more!

This is the in-game screen. Nothing too special here, just links to the related scoreboards. The only improvement I can think of so far is allowing the admin to select whether or not the game icon appears here (basically it's just a template thing).

UPDATED FOR BETA 2!

This screen is displayed to the user when a game ends. It gives their score's ranking among all scores for that particular game, and allows them to enter a comment if desired. After adding a comment, they are taken to the scoreboard for that particular game.

A planned improvement is to take the user directly to whichever page of the scoreboard their score landed in (or better yet, allowing the admin to specify whether they go there or to the top of the scoreboard).

UPDATED FOR BETA 2!

New in Beta 2 is the Game Duration, which is a Tool Tip when the user hovers the mouse over the Date field. Also new is a bunch of behind-the-scenes security stuff.

This is the scoreboard. Note that on my site, I do *not* use the alternating background colors BUT the admin can change this in the vbProArcade control panel.

UPDATED FOR BETA 2!

New in Beta 2 are the various Tool Tips all over the place that give the user a bit more information, as well as links to the User Scoreboard and User Detail pages for each user (see the magnifying glasses on the right of the screen).

Here is what I call the "Top Score Board" which shows only each user's highest score, and displays a few quick statistics about the game. This is really more meaningful than the scoreboard, since it lets you figure out exactly where you fall among all players.

UPDATED FOR BETA 2!

Everything new here is basically the same as what you will find in the scoreboard.

This is the game modification screen in the vbProArcade Admin Panel. The admin can select a game icon and a king icon, as well as change the security features of the game (score var and hash offset) and a few other things.

This screen has been simplified since Beta 1.

UPDATED FOR BETA 2!

The "Who's Online" display for vbProArcade automatically determines which games are installed and which game a user is playing. There is no need to modify online.php further when new games are installed -- everything is automatic.

Planned improvements include displaying "Viewing Arcade" and "Viewing such-and-such Scoreboard" (this is already done on my test site).

Current features I'm working on adding:

- Admin-selectable Scoreboard icons
- Admin-selectable "King" icons
- "Champions" System, allowing users to show as "Champion of such-and-such" at various places in the forums
- vbProArcade/vbStats integration
- vbProArcade Mini-Stats (for the arcade main page)
- Admin "Scoreboard Browser/Editor"

And more to come.

Thanks for reading!

Nice. :) Keep up the good work.

real nice. wtg

wow this is insane man, props!
im estatic!!! :):)

the screens made me horny!! haha

Wow, this sounds awesome. Cant wait to try it out :)

:banana:

Very nice work, keep it up :thumbsup:

Edit:
I just tested this out, its amazing, nice work.

This is all fine and dandy, and you have just made a lot of people happy, in more ways than one lol but wouldn't it have been smart to post this in General Hacking Discussion until the code was puplicly released? Just a thought.

:banana:

futureal, you really did it!

Wow, your hack look hot. :banana:

Curious, how many games you plan to add? Is it easy to add new games?

I look at your screenshot, it seem show low queries with ranking system. How many queries ranking system make?

Edit:
[offtopic]Excuse my sloppy english :p It s not my first language after all..[/offtopic]

I see nothing wrong with posting it here, since this is where it will end up eventually. I was looking for feedback (part of the reason for beta-testing a hack) and I will be editing the first post with the code as soon as I have it ready to go. Should be within the next few days.

He does have an online "beta" for us :)
http://www.shadowsofnamek.com/forums/proarcade.php or something :)

I will add as many games as I can find. It is really not that difficult to modify an existing Flash file to interact with the database. The question really comes down to just finding good quality Flash games that are worth modifying.

As a side note, we have modified the original Tetris game to include music, sped up the line-removal and made a few other minor edits.

It makes as many queries as it needs to make. Aside from the regular amount of vBulletin queries, a typical scoreboard load would require only two queries: one to get the total amount of entries (for the page navigation) and one to get the actual scoreboard data. It is possible that a third query could be added to pull options out of the configuration table.

Can't see "any" differences to John's arcade hack. Same layout, same features, complete rip. Just free, :D

You can't really judge til you see the coding.

I think your out of line calling it a complete rip.

Actually, I have John's hack (which is great) and this one may look superficially similar, but there are some differences. And futureal can only rip it if he got hold of a copy in the first place. Did you base this on John's hack at all? The games look the same - are the SWF files the same ones for John's hack? Are the database tables the same? Just asking to know if the 2 hacks are compatible at all...

futureal, it looks like a winner, so far. I'm impressed. Looking forward to this. ;)

By the way, the "donation" check is in the mail. :p

Wow, looks awesome - greatwork!

Can't wait to try this out! :)

This hack was completed (in its current form) before John released his hack to anybody. If you read through some of the vbTetris thread, you can see some of posts hinting at the progress I had made in my version.

I have never seen any of John's code outside of the vbTetris hack he released. I based mine on that code, but ended up rewriting most of it.

NexDog, you'll also notice that the layout of these two hacks is completely different. You'll also find that mine uses about 1/10th as many queries.

True, the layout doesn't look at all a like...

Interesting...I'm not all that big into flash games, but does anyone know if there a such thing as multiplayer flash games? One that two or more members can compete in?

=D futureal, thanks for answer my QQ. I think there are at least two links to great games (.fla) at Johns thread or maybe Erwin's thread. In any case, yours look great! Good luck with your hack.

It is possible but I think it requires XML to work. I m not sure though..

nice...thi will be a fun one :) great work, really looking forward to it...

Yes, multiplayer flash games are possible, and integration into vBulletin would not be much harder than what we have done here. However, running multiplayer flash games requires hosting an XML server, which would (at the very least) require a dedicated box and some good security. Flash can interact with the server using XML sockets and thus allow multiple people to play together.

At this point in time, I think that PHP/MySQL or Java are better options for multiplayer real-time gaming. In fact, we are testing a vB port of an old-school BBS game as I speak (hint hint -- totally unrelated to this hack, though...)

You promissed me that you will give me the code and let me see what I can add before you release it! :(

Absolutly amazing futureal, very nice! Can't wait to try this. ;)

Looks great so far.

Ahhh... the teasing... ;)

I would love to have a multi-player chess game actually... I've looked at some java applets... if only I had more time...

Yea, multiplayer games integrated with vB is definitely the "holy grail" for me. Unfortunately running a fully operation server isn't in the (financial) cards right now, but there are other options.

A PHP/MySQL-based real-time chess game would be a distinct possibility, actually. Aside from initiating the sessions correctly and making sure that two users are playing each other and only each other, the game logic itself would not be difficult at all.

In fact, I bet I could make it. But I shall limit myself to one thing at a time. Maybe once this hack is done, I will set to work on that. And once that code is laid down, it would open the door for many other games of that nature: Chess, Checkers, Battleship, etc.

Good idea!

Just what I have been waiting on.

My user keep saying when are we getting more games that rank ?

I keep saying soon.

they are getting tired of just tetris .

When do you project this project to be done and what other games are you adding to it that rank or have a leaderboard ?

looks great !

Actually, there is a php/ mysql multiplayer chess game out already. It's a nuke module - someone has ported it to vBPortal.

Link discussing it here:
http://216.40.225.55/forums/showthre...ighlight=chess

I don't run vBPortal anymore... I had a look at it to see if I can port it over to vB, but it's complicated. :)

I've attached the vBPortal version here - see if you can do anything with it. ;)

Yea, guess I was out of order and I apologize. It would be nice to see what this looks like on a standard install though. Anything that cuts down on queries is a good thing too. :)