Forum Arcade Complete With Highscores

[DOS Wolf]

Not sure if this was suggested or not before, but I know of other websites that have games that can be played on the forum itself. Nothing too technical last time I checked, but fun none the less. Basically stuff like Asteroids, Space Invaders, racing, shooting, bubble popping, puzzles, etc. Best of all the forums would keep the scores for the players and we could try to get the highest score. Of course I am sure there are flash games that are even better than those, but not every one can play them if they are too graphic intensive. Just a suggestion.

[tienkhoanguyen]

Sir, just as a suggestion, I could "attempt" to make a simple space-invader type game. I do not know how it would go since I am a new developer. I do not have much experience.

For the score keeping, I hear www.playdosgames.com has some system to keep scores for the players who play DOS games online?

[tienkhoanguyen]

Here is my current report. It is nothing much however I hope you find it fun. I've programmed the J-key to move left, the I-key to move up, the L-key to move right, and the K-key to move down. The spacebar fires a friendship "beacon".

http://www.mediafire.com/download/9xq2a ... ACEBOL.EXE

[Wally]

Not sure if this was suggested or not before, but I know of other websites that have games that can be played on the forum itself. Nothing too technical last time I checked, but fun none the less. Basically stuff like Asteroids, Space Invaders, racing, shooting, bubble popping, puzzles, etc. Best of all the forums would keep the scores for the players and we could try to get the highest score. Of course I am sure there are flash games that are even better than those, but not every one can play them if they are too graphic intensive. Just a suggestion.

Was suggested at least a decade ago. Gee i've been here a long time. .

Then again.. emmzee rarely updates the site

[wardrich]

Sir, just as a suggestion, I could "attempt" to make a simple space-invader type game. I do not know how it would go since I am a new developer. I do not have much experience.

For the score keeping, I hear www.playdosgames.com has some system to keep scores for the players who play DOS games online?

This doesn't even make sense for OP's suggestion... unless you know how to make it browser-based, and have the high scores save in a database.


Also - JLIK? What's wrong with WASD and Space to shoot?

[tienkhoanguyen]

Sir, just as a suggestion, I could "attempt" to make a simple space-invader type game. I do not know how it would go since I am a new developer. I do not have much experience.

For the score keeping, I hear www.playdosgames.com has some system to keep scores for the players who play DOS games online?

This doesn't even make sense for OP's suggestion... unless you know how to make it browser-based, and have the high scores save in a database.


Also - JLIK? What's wrong with WASD and Space to shoot?

I never thought of that for the keys.

I was thinking somehow Joris over at www.playdosgames.com might know how to do that stuff (save game).

For high scores, it is possible only if Joris could do the same game in browser type thing. However that is his website and the game would have to go over there since it is a sister site?

I just updated the game to be a peaceful one. So it is actually two players. You use both the JLIK and WASD keys. Since it is on the same keyboard I do not know how it is going to respond if both are used at the same time.

http://www.mediafire.com/download/0vy6q ... RRIED8.EXE

[DOS Wolf]

This doesn't even make sense for OP's suggestion... unless you know how to make it browser-based, and have the high scores save in a database.

Ahhh... "Original Poster" Haha! So yea, it would need to be able to be loaded directly into the forum area and be able to be played by anyone and high scores kept automatically, although you would have to be logged in for the high scores to count and be registered. Say the top 5 or even the top 10. But I am not talking about a game made by one of us, unless it just happens to be one and decently good, but many. A forum I was at had between 10-20 games. Nothing too fancy or graphic intensive. The games are out there, you just need to set them up.

[MrFlibble]

Why not just play games elsewhere and post your high scores here (e.g. with screenshots)? Upgrading forum software for this feature might be quite cumbersome.

[tienkhoanguyen]

I'm not one to argue, however I do agree with MrFlibble. Joris over at www.playdosgames.com already has a save game feature. It may not be a highscore however if the game has a highscore built-in, then the save game feature will keep all those highscores! So the game MUST do the hard work. However, the save game part goes to WWW.PLAYDOSGAMES.COM - you do NEED TO LOG IN. It has already been implemented over there!

So instead of being redundant and doing it again over here, I agree with MrFlibble suggestion! Good idea.

After all, WWW.PLAYDOSGAMES.COM is a "sister" affiliate website. So as in society, "specialization of labour".

[tienkhoanguyen]

This doesn't even make sense for OP's suggestion... unless you know how to make it browser-based, and have the high scores save in a database.

Ahhh... "Original Poster" Haha! So yea, it would need to be able to be loaded directly into the forum area and be able to be played by anyone and high scores kept automatically, although you would have to be logged in for the high scores to count and be registered. Say the top 5 or even the top 10. But I am not talking about a game made by one of us, unless it just happens to be one and decently good, but many. A forum I was at had between 10-20 games. Nothing too fancy or graphic intensive. The games are out there, you just need to set them up.

http://www.mediafire.com/download/0o5v4 ... RRIEDA.EXE

Here is a link to the game I did because of your suggestion.

I always want to come through for my friends so I tried the highscore.

There might be glitches however please let me know what you think!

[tienkhoanguyen]

It is my understanding that a website with the capabilities of a "save game progress" will allow my game here to maintain highscores!

The only problem is if it does not save the current state of the game like when you turn the computer off then the scores will be lost.

I know people are sensitive to viruses so I decided not to save to disk.

However if this game is good enough to make it over www.PlayDosGames.com then people can play and have highscores.

However everyone needs to play it one at a time and log into the same account.

This is just some thoughts. However like MrFlibble says that it is possibly too much work!

However if you save the game to your own account, then the best it could do is save the highscores for your friends and families who play under your account.

[Quadko]

No save to disky? No worky even on websity.

I'm somewhat suspicious of the theory that people (me!) will willingly download your random game exe from mediafire and run it in dosbox, but are too much of shrinking violets so that if that exe "saves a datafile" that would be "too much!"

Programatically, I think the dos file API will let you just read & write a memory block to disk. And will do a "file exists" or at least "failed to open". So highscor.dat can just be 12 entries x 16 bytes per entry (or whatever) in memory, and you save that memory to disk and load it from disk, and no worries. Lots of arcade style old dos games do that - they even show "empty" or "fake" entries for the default 12 high scores.

Or you get fancy and do something modern like parsing memory to save it to the file, then parse the file one record at a time to load it back to memory, but why go to the hassle? Write and read 192 bytes (12*16) or whatever into your db highscores variable, and all done!

Looking at online docs, it's something like int 21h, func 22h "random write using FCB". You have to setup and open an FCB (File Control Block) variable, but that's pretty easy for someone who's doing graphics and gamepad stuff!

[tienkhoanguyen]

In that case, I might use Borland Turbo C 2.01 - it has been a while since I did stuffs like that. However I just am too tired right now after getting all the major updates for the feedbacks done. I did not get too much sleep. However I hope you all enjoy. hehe

Just make sure you donate to me somehow if you see me laying on the streets since I am not getting any money from it that I could see hehe

Anyways things seem fine so far. I never thought it would feel like work however I hope it shows that it is good enough for a little game anyways.

Well, my next order of business is the save scores! So I am too tired from taking my meds to do anything right now. Just called my mom and she is tired out. We almost got a fire hazard here yesterday so I am glad everyone is fine! So much to do however I guess that is life.

Thanks to grace I might be able to get some 100-packs of blank DVDs for backing up my projects since I am down to like 8 discs - yikes!!!!!!!!!!!!

Well, until next post - I hope you tell your friends your scores and enjoy. haha

[Quadko]

Good luck to you on backups and saves! Now you know assembly and opcodes, have you tried looking at your C code running in the debugger? That might be interesting to see what the compiler does to your code.

I hadn't realized we were a bit OT on the original suggestion, I forgot this wasn't a dev thread. I haven't looked at the online JS Dosbox versions and what it takes to host them. Hm, it would be fun to do that for my favorite five games on my own website. And it would certainly be cool to have the games here all hosted, but I imagine that would take a lot of time. It takes me a ton of time converting my archives to "ready to play" dosbox setups. But it's fun in a bug-collecting stamp-arranging shelf-reordering kind of way.

But it could be fun and easy to have a DosGames.com Wiki for further game reviews & play stories & screenshots & highscore posting. It'd need us to admin it to keep it on track, but I think we could do that. Mobygames is the encyclopedia, but this could be about playing and testimonials and a little highscore competition instead of "unbiased reviews". That could be a cheap way to get the OP idea working, if our dear site admin was interested. And it'd be fun to have the forum, the wiki, and the game site all connected and integrated; I haven't seen that done much. Of course we can just start a wiki at one of the hosting sites out there, but it would be much more valuable connected and "hosted" here much like the forum. Whatdaya think?

[tienkhoanguyen]

Well, it could be possible I am assuming since I played over at WWW.PLAYDOSGAMES.COM and it is pretty darn close to the original except for the internet lag sometimes. However it is really close!

So maybe the admin over at WWW.PLAYDOSGAMES.COM could help however that is up to the admin. I think Joris runs things over there. However the games might have to be to his taste so you have to talk to him personally!

For your own website since Joris has a successful one he might give you some pointers on running yours if you want that suggestion and he is giving freebie pointers hehe. I know I am stubborn and want to develop my own routine however I also realize realistically I could not have done it without your GAMEPAD routine, David Brackeen's VGA routine, and such.

I did do a disassemble of my C and it is mind bogging. It does all the work for you. For instance, it would adjust the stack for you and such. Very complicated stuffs done for you.

For wiki about the original poster's suggestion that would be nice. A little wiki to list maybe tips and so on.