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!

[ghentskyhawk]

Sanni, the file worked perfectly, thanks

[jayneblaze]

One of my members score did not post... they took a screen shot of they scores.. but it didnt show up at all...

[Automated]

Originally posted by jayneblaze
One of my members score did not post... they took a screen shot of they scores.. but it didnt show up at all...

Are you sure the screen shot hasnt been edited?

[BrAinZ]

Wondering what impact on the rest of the board, the increase in stored high scores is going to have?

Is there any way to limit the number stored?

Also... How do you reset the scores ?

[futureal]

Originally posted by BrAinZ
Wondering what impact on the rest of the board, the increase in stored high scores is going to have?

Is there any way to limit the number stored?

Also... How do you reset the scores ?

It will have absolutely no impact on the board. The scores take up an absolutely miniscule amount of space in the database.

There is no current way to limit the number of scores stored (I am still not sure why you would want to).

You can reset the scores in the Admin CP in Beta 2.

[futureal]

Known things that will be fixed in 2.01:

- security problems, hash security toggle
- showing people as playing in the arcade when viewing threads
- bad SQL query (trying to insert an Array)

Anything else of note? Those are the main ones I keep saying.

I also can't stress enough the fact that this hack will not work with non-IE browsers. To those that have emailed me, it's not my fault, and I'm sorry that things are the way they are, but Netscape, Mozilla and Opera simply don't handle POST data correctly (or well, to put it a different way).

[BrAinZ]

Originally posted by futureal
It will have absolutely no impact on the board. The scores take up an absolutely miniscule amount of space in the database.

There is no current way to limit the number of scores stored (I am still not sure why you would want to).

You can reset the scores in the Admin CP in Beta 2.

Great, as long as it doesn't take up much space there's no need to delete them... so thanks for that.

BUT.. The reset scores option in Beta 2, does not seem to work on my board

Is it just me, or have I missed something obvious?

[Tigga]

I really don't see why so many people seem concerned about the number of scores kept in the database. I've had this installed since around the 2nd day it was released. I currently have 1,300 scores that are recorded and it takes up 133kb of space. My entire database takes up 260mb, so that would be around 0.0005% of the space.


As long as your asking for suggestions futureal, here's a couple of things I noticed... The places it checks the time & date of scores uses the date function instead of the vbdate function, so it doesn't show the correct time if it's been changed in the Admin CP.
None of the templates the arcade uses are called at the beginning of the script, so of course that adds unnecessary extra queries for each template.
I also noticed that you didn't use the free_result function after you were done with the queries, which of course isn't good for high traffic sites. Not that I think it's really affecting things too much, but it still wouldn't hurt.
As far as I remember those were the only suggestions I had for the script. Looking forward to the update and thank you for your hard work on an excellent script.

[Preech]

is there any particular reason why I can't unzip tetris from the vbproarcade zip file? i would expect its just a bad attachment, but I kept trying to redownload it with no success. can someone attach an unzipped swf file or email it to mvpaudio@comcast.net ? i would appreciate it greatly!

[Preech]

nvm it finally worked - after I restarted my computer about six times. thanks.