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!

[NSeXcellent]

Will this ever be moved out of the beta classification?

[futureal]

Yes, when I am confident that it is worthy of being a final hack. It still lacks some major stuff (notably the Mozilla support).

[PixelFx]

how goes development? futureal,

[Tigga]

I haven't really had time to follow this hack in quite some time, so I'm not sure if someone has mentioned this before... If anyone is still having an issue with the amount of time it takes to load the main arcade page when there are a lot of games, I've found a pretty simple fix for that problem. If you log into phpMyAdmin and run the following two queries it will help improve the speed dramatically...

ALTER TABLE `arcadescores` ADD INDEX ( `game` )
ALTER TABLE `arcadescores` ADD INDEX ( `username` )

That doesn't help with the number of queries on that page, but it does help a lot with the page generation times. Before my page took around 2.5 - 3 seconds to load (with about 15 games), but now it's down to about 0.5 seconds.

[futureal]

Tigga, good call, optimizing the tables for scalability is something I never thought about or worked on. I'll have to add that stuff to a coming version.

PixelFx, I have actually been working hard with the Gamma version, and rewriting a good deal of the code (especially the admin stuff). I will have the 2.1 beta for vB2 out soon, I swear!

[M?uschen]

M?uschen: I'm not quite sure what you're looking for. If you clear the arcade scores table, the top scores table will be preserved. So you could run the direct query:

DELETE FROM arcadescores;

That will clear the entire arcadescores table.

Sorry I cant't find "DELETE FROM arcadescores". Please tell me, where i should searching...

[MindTrix]

Its not a option mate

It is a MYSQL query which needs to be run in PHPMYADMIN

[M?uschen]

A query? What is a query? Do you mean this ***/admin/proarcadeadmin.php?

Mäuschen *?*

[MindTrix]

Ummm nope this code

[mysql]DELETE FROM arcadescores;[/mysql]

Is called a MYSQL query. Basically it is code that modifys your database in one way or another.

It has too be run in your hosts control panel in the database section, usually through a program called PHPMYADMIN

[M?uschen]

Ok i'm to stupid... *sry* where should i do this?