Leaderboards - Online

How many machines have a network card and are actively used for gaming?

For Eric Mendel's game Do The Same I helped to generate highscore code to be pushed online manually: http://ricco59em.free.fr/dts/index.php
There were about 25% of control bits if I remember well (to make sure the code was good), but with more characters (and therefore more control bits) you could have a very robust system.

I like the idea of being able to centralize high scores, but requiring the use of a network card on MSX would severely limit the users who would use it.

Hey. Cool! Just the kind of various feedback I was hoping for. So something has been done here. Codes or QR-codes is pretty nice to get all aboard, because yes, there are really few users with network connectivity, as ARTRAG is hinting (although, if more and more network features are used in our applications, then the network-cart install base would increase somewhat).

What I need to conquer then, is the use of openmsx/emulators where you can cheat, like using the PgUp key to rewind your last miss. I'll have to detect the emulator of course. Probably by finding a bug or shortcoming in the emulator that the devs will not EVER prioritize fixing However. The problem with this, is that some haxx0rz dude may just use a hex-editor to bypass/fix this detection code, and use his modified .rom file when playing. It might not be that the scores from emulators should be dismissed, but they should be put into it's own category. Everybody can play perfect with rewind-button.

The code can checksum itself or parts of the code or memory and pass on to the server, but again, the hacker may be able send in correct checksums, in clever ways. To avoid using old checksums, you can make the system more robust if you get seeds from the server to bake into your checksum. But this can be spoofed as well. But it is possible to make this very hard to do.

Just as the above, the problem with checksumming (/control-bits) in the data/score sent to the server, is that the haxx0rz dude may just intercept the game code just before the data-block is constructed/sent (and replacing the current score in memory), bypassing the need to break the algorithm.

But... first we need something that stops the low-threshold-cheating. For those who really wants to cheat it is always possible, but then one might try to put in logic on the serverside that can identify cheaters. Possible in some games, impossible in others.

The problem with the manual, one-way solution, is that the rankings are not put back into the local game instance, on the user's MSX screen. That would be better though, and is only achievable with network.

It could be smooth then, to have leaderboards in the game, supporting multiple “profiles” (that are super easy to set up, like Netflix “who is watching”) to allow for “family competition” *and* with automatic display of online leaderboards if internet is accessible, or just local (with QR-codes) when there is no internet.

Question is, is there an overview somewhere, of the various internet connectivity solutions? Would be cool to support it. I’m sure the various vendors are interested in developers making use of their HW too?

Thanks a lot for input!

If I understand this correctly, this would need the user to submit immediately, unless we allow for a lot of slack time. And giving extra time can hide time used to cheat in some games. So it could work in some games, but not in others. The user could of course just hack the game, and hardcode the score to be 99999999 and the game would happily just report that score :-/

But also, in my current envisioned game, entering a tournament code for every run would be massive. It's a kind of game where the levels are played over and over again. And they are short.

So I guess I need to ponder a bit more