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!

[tnguy3n]

neva mind, i got it figured out. work great on my board now. Thanks again futureal!!!!

[KingdomHeartsII]

I am having a problem, the images are not showing up (non of them either in admin cp or the proarcade.php) and also when i click on a name for a game it goes to a page can not be displayed screen.

Any Ideas?

- Kingdom Hearts

edit (I had my URL wrong in my Options for the vB .. silly me)

- KH2

[Pseudomizer]

Originally Posted by futureal

Pseudomizer: Are you sure it is operating system specific? I have never had any problems with it on any of the systems I've installed it on, which have been all different flavors of linux (my own servers all run RedHat distros).

All of the problems I've encountered with others have been when PHP safe mode is enabled.

Hi Futureal,

i wouldn't have spent time on this, if this would not be the case. I searched multiple times through this thread and 4 or 5 guys had the same problem and no one could find the problem.

So a friend of mine and myself spent 2 days on this with trying to find the error and comparing settings like PHP and MySQL. There was nothing special but in safe or in non-safe mode everything worked fine EXCEPT the upload of the thumbnails into the database.

So most of the people used the workaround to insert queries direct into the database. But this was only a workaround and so we sat down and tried to fix this.

If you look on the comment of Magic Sparc, my solution worked for him and i would guess, that he did not change any other settings expect to mine, i just gave him.

So this prooves my assumption that there could be some problems between different flavours of unix and windows.

That was the reason why i asked if someone is interested in my investigations because i did this for my server because i wanted to use this functionality if you had this built-in. Feel free to comment or apply changes to this but it works for me now.

Cheers,

Pseudomizer

[futureal]

Thanks for putting the time into it, I will definitely make the change for future versions. I wasn't being critical, just being curious.

[AmbitiousLemon]

you say netscape has a problem with this hack but does this hack work with ANY browser other than ie on windows?

[MaDCaT75]

Not sure on that one.

[futureal]

Originally Posted by AmbitiousLemon

you say netscape has a problem with this hack but does this hack work with ANY browser other than ie on windows?

Not that I'm aware of. I tried to get it to go with any Mozilla-based browsers but no luck so far. I could only get Flash to send the data via GET, which made it far to easy for people to just plug values into their browser's URL bar as scores.

It's still not completely secure using HTTP POST, but it's a lot better. I will keep trying other stuff...

[AmbitiousLemon]

thanks. and thanks for being so cool. i just came back because to edit my post because i thought it might sound snotty. i ddint mean it that way.

i run a mac forum so most users use mozilla or khtml based browsers. this might sound stupid but you could try asking some mozilla guys (pinkerton) or khtml guys (dave hyatt) to include GET commands. both seem pretty receptive to that kind of stuff.

[pmay68]

I have installed to a T, checked and doble checked everything.. but when I goto my admin section it does not show the vbpro games sections as you show in the picture.. Yes, i have installed all the sql entries, and templates, and uploaded all the files in the correct places.. Any suggestions as to why it does not show in my admin?? Thats all I need to get the games running as the score pages show up fine etc... PLEASE HELP

Oh also when I try to run the admin for pro arcade directly i get this error if it helps any

Fatal error: Call to undefined function: dotableheader() in /www/a/adventurers/htdocs/forums/admin/proarcadeadmin.php on line 30

Originally Posted by futureal

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!

[Circe-Net.Com]

my pro arcade address is
http://host.bh.xgb.net/~circenet/forum/proarcade.php

but when i die in a game and it oes t record the score it goes to

http://host.bh.xgb.net/proarcade.php

i havnt got a clue why ive tried looking but im a noobeh, any help wud be appreciated, ty