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!

[futureal]

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

Thanks Erwin! I will definitely check that out when I have the time. It should not be too difficult at all to integrate something like this into vBulletin.

[Ninth Dimension]

What I'd like to know is what a store hack verson of this would do? Give you points the more you play or something?

Don't get me wrong, I like the idea, but would it not be better to leave a feature like that off? after all, this is a reward for your loyal users, you can't really give them more points for doing something like playing games when they should/could be posting messages?

Maybe it's just me?

What I can see being popular is some type of points casino where you gamble your current points on the slots, or some type of card game - now that would be cool, I can see my users going for that IN A BIG WAY!!!

[futureal]

Originally posted by Ninth Dimension
Anyway, my suggestion is this, I like the idea of each user having his/her own personal high score which will be overwritten if they beat it, or left as it is if they don?t.

I feel that something like this would help to save database space, and would give the users two things to work towards, getting the highest score on the board, but also beating there own personal best without recording all the failed attempts. Maybe this can be an option that can be turned on and off?

It is possible that this could be an admin-defined option -- something where if a user does not beat his/her high score, instead of taking them to the "Add Score" page it goes straight to the "Play Game" screen or perhaps the Scoreboard. The only problem with this implementation is that it would "break" the statistics engine, which works on counting rows in the arcade table to determine popularity, average scores, times played and so on.

Database space is not a huge issue. On my main site that is running the arcade already, games have been played 3,636 times, and the total space taken up the table is 224KB. That is very, very small.

Another suggestion I have is that you should have an arcade main page, showing all the high scores and games available (like in johns hack). However I don?t feel that the whole thing should be blocked out to unregistered users, instead (like I?ve done on my site) only playing the games and recording the scores should be locked out. This way the unregistered users get to see what they are missing out on, and sign-up rather that just seeing a no permissions page and leaving.

I agree completely about not blocking out the pages to Unregistered users. In fact, that is already exactly how my hack operates. A future improvement could be to make this selectable by the admin.

The only other thing I can suggest is that you make it easy to be placed into directories other than the forum one (using the chdir() functions) and making sure the templates reflect this.

This is also (sort of) already part of the hack. The admin defines a directory for games (in my case, /arcade/) and then all .swf files are stored there and called from there. I figured that was a lot better than keeping them all in the /forum directory.

Thanks for the input!

[Ninth Dimension]

<font size="4">OR!!!</font>

Depending on how mean you are you could get your users to gamble a number of points on one of the game, and then choose a level/score.

If that user reaches that score during that game, then they receive more points, if they fail they loose them..

Obviously each of the 5 current games have seperate scoring systems, so it would need to be customisable depending on each game, or even go as far as have multipul levels:

i.e. if on snake they choose, and get more than 50, they double the number of points, if they choose and get 150, they get triple points, etc...

The only problem I can see with this (or the whole points system) is that there are a number of diffrent points systems available, and I believe it would be prefrable to support all of them (or at least most). e.g. I'm not going to install the store hack cos I have no need for it, but I might re-install the itemshop or the gold hack).

[futureal]

Originally posted by john.eovie
futureal - I noticed you included a date field in the scoreboards. I was thinking about doing the same, but I didn't bother because I didn't know how the vB timezone system worked. How do you make the GMT +/- adjustment?

Basically, there is a setting in the General Options part of the vBulletin admin panel where the admin defines what time zone the server is in. All dates/times are stored in "server time" in the database, and then adjusted based on the user's defined time zone in their User Options setting. I forgot the name of the function offhand, but there is a vB utility function that will take a server time and spit back the user's time based on $bbuserinfo.

As for the multiplayer engine, it sounds great! If you don't mind me asking, what kind of technology are you using for the games? Flash or Java, maybe?

[Lanigironu]

Wow, that Chess game is unbelivably complex.

It's purely PHP, isn't it?

[Vivi Ornitier]

okay i can't wait for this hack, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE!!! Can u give us an approximate release date?

[futureal]

I will let you know tonight what the approximate release date will be.

At the moment, I just decided to pull *all* of the templates out and relabel/restructure them. I hadn't really thought ahead at all, and they were getting pretty confusing. It might not sound like progress, but believe me, you'll thank me for that later.

(The hack is split up across many templates, which in theory should make it easier to add/subtract features and to find the exact piece of HTML code you want...)

[NTLDR]

This really does sound extreamly comprehensive, I can't wait to install this one

[high]* NTLDR awaits an approx release date :banana:[/high]

[NuclioN]

Originally posted by Vivi Ornitier
okay i can't wait for this hack, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE!!! Can u give us an approximate release date?

with all the extra query's you hang in the item shop this would kill your server i guess.


[high]* NuclioN just teasing[/high]

[futureal]

Heh, I just realized that in about half my references I have been using "/forum/filename" rather than "$bburl/filename" ... in other words, I'm still having fun with template editing.

As far as integration with the various Store/RPG-type hacks out there, I could see this being used. For example, the for each score of more than XX you get YY points/gold/whatever. For each day that you can maintain a rank above ZZ in some game you get something... and so on. Plenty of different ways you could do it.

Now, as for *me* doing an integration, I have no idea. I have never taken a look at one of those store things code-wise, but I can't imagine it would be too complex. Still, I don't think I'd be running one of those on my own forums any time soon, so I dunno. Perhaps once this hack is released and stable, I can check it out... but it's something I would probably leave to somebody who is more experienced with the store/RPG stuff.

[E]

I can't wait for this one. You can check out my sig for games. If you need any of the files, pm me and ill send you a copy to add tot he hack. Just use one of the "test" user names in my sig and goto the extras or the link and look at all the games I have on my forum.
Use anything you like.
Peace
Emmett

[futureal]

I hit a roadblock tonight when I realized I had made an error in something I had said earlier, regarding the "Top Score Board." I had been using a GROUP BY clause in the SELECT query to get each user's top score. However, it came to my attention that in doing this, we are discarding all unique entries from other fields, and to make a long story short, the incorrect date/time/comments were coming back.

As far as that goes, I am left with a choice as to what to do. I can either:

(a) drop the entire idea of a top score board (I won't do this, though)
(b) add an additional query to the page for each user (server intensive, 25 users per page means an addition 25 queries)
(c) dump the entire table to an array in a second query and just use a search algorithm to find the correct values (might have major issues down the road if the table gets large enough)

What I will probably do is file this under the category of "known bug" and get back to it later, when I have the time to do a server-load test of options (b) and (c). In the meantime, if anybody knows MySQL extraordinarily well (in other words, you understand what I said in the first paragraph ) and has a good way of doing this efficiently, let me know.

[Goldknight]

Try to ask g-force2k2 or Logician, they have pretty good knowledge with queries.

[futureal]

Still working on getting this into "release candidate" form. My biggest concern is finalizing the table structures, so that those of you who install this as a beta do not have to go back and nuke your old tables when future versions are released.

Thanks for bearing with me.