[supermystery]

Are there any sonic hacks that have score boards to them? for example when I play through a game of Puyo Puyo there is a score board where I can put my name into the score board, to leave there for the next time I play through the game. I think this is great for re-playability, since I play through the game with a high score but it does not get acknowledged in the game, it would be cool if say sonic 1, 2 ,3k had one of those.

[Jayextee]

supermystery, on 08 December 2013 - 04:16 PM, said:

I think this is great for re-playability, since I play through the game with a high score but it does not get acknowledged in the game, it would be cool if say sonic 1, 2 ,3k had one of those.

Although you can't register your name, Sonic Jam on the Sega Saturn does retain your top three times for each act in its dedicated Time Attack mode. I love that kinda thing, too.

[MainMemory]

Sonic 2 Adventure Edition stores your best score, time and ring count per character for each stage just like Sonic Adventure.

[MathUser]

Sonic the Hedgehog 1 @ SAGE 2010 This hack records your times too. I don't think that it lets you enter your name though.

Sonic 3 & Knuckles: The Challenges This might interest you as well.

Sonic 2 Time Attack This is also an alternative to a Sonic 2 with time attack. Warning about this one. It constantly saves to SRAM so it's better on computer than on flash carts.

This post has been edited by MathUser: 09 December 2013 - 09:09 AM

[supermystery]

Those are some great hacks I'm glad they actually save both the scores and times, but I was thinking more like the traditional score table that you see on most arcade games. Maybe something similar to how the sonic games were done on mega play (perhaps even a separate mode for it on the console versions). Thanks for the suggestions.

[Dragon Dude]

I for one think a scoreboard would be an interesting addition to one of the games, but I wonder about the level of difficulty of putting one in. Would it be possible to port one in from another ROM?

[MainMemory]

I'm absolutely certain that coding one from scratch would be much easier than porting one from a completely different game.

[Kharen]

Would it be possible to have a separate file, or even just a save file, that could be read by the ROM that contained the scoreboard? That way, we could have a sort of online leaderboard, and you just upload/download the file.

Kind of like being able to export a tiny file that only has your data on it, and when uploaded to the site, it gets processed into part of a larger file that has the top ten scores or times on it, which can be downloaded and imported back into the game.

I'm pretty sure this wouldn't be too hard to implement for a fan-game, but a ROM might be a different story. I don't know enough to know if it's a feasible idea or not.

[MainMemory]

You just described a manually updated version of Retro Channel.

[Cinossu]

The main problem with any scoreboard that updates in the way you describe is a method of how the ROM interacts outside of the emulator; either you upload a file (most likely the save RAM or whatever is in use) or you make the emulator communicate somewhere itself. Both options are obviously feasible and both have their potential flaws:

Uploading save RAM/whatever means you have no need to program anything specific to the emulator, but it does require the player having to physically upload the file themselves; then there's the possibility of different emulators formatting their saved data slightly differently to take into account, plus it also opens up the possibility of hacked results greatly. In addition to this, for the player to see a result in-game, they will have to download a saved data at the end of the process, and do this process of download-upload every time they wish to see updates to the said-scoreboards. This in itself will lead to easier hacking, as all it really takes is two differing files and comparing for changes to begin potentially changing the scoreboards to whatever you wish.

Having the emulator do it directly means the player (potentially) doesn't have to download or upload their saved data and it can be done automatically, but it requires actually programming something for the emulator itself for this to work. Most emulators don't allow this form of plugin (Gens/GS does; more on this later) and modifying an emulator's source means every time you make a new update a player has to update the emulator (of course, you could program in some form of self-update, but that's up to you). Hacking becomes a lot harder in these cases, as you can control the whole process without much interference (at least until they get dedicated; it's always possible to alter the ROM rather than the process), and it means updates can be seen instantly whenever you want.

The second option is what I went with (and am still going with) for Retro Channel; version 1 of the system that came with Sonic 1 @ SAGE 2010 used Gens/GS and a custom plugin using its MDP system. While it let me do a lot, it did have a great deal of bugs with it, and MDP has not nearly as many hooks as I would like yet. I know Gerbil intends to update this eventually (with Gens/GS II), but it doesn't seem to be anywhere in the near future (and it's become somewhat of a running joke to always ask him when MDP is ready/being worked on, making it even less likely to be). That said, Retro Channel's planned scope is a lot larger than just a scoreboard, and I was going for this and programming parts for this since the beginning. Scoreboards by themselves could probably be made quite simply (version 1 of Retro Channel was basically just that).

So, either you go down the route of upload/download - more annoying to the player(s) can be implemented fairly simply - or going down the plugin route - less emulator choice (just the one), needs more time and effort to implement and/or test, but benefits the player and the system greatly.

[redhotsonic]

My S2TA will do it in a similar fashion to what Cinossu first explained, except the SRAM data file is encrypted very well. And if you try to edit even one byte, the whole data may possibly erase itself. In the future (I've been so lazy recently), there will be a program to decrypt the data, upload all times (and in future, your username) and upload it all to an online database (or the Retro channel), then decrypt the SRAM again. Except for MD.emu, all emulators and even real hardware seems to be fine with my SRAM system for S2TA. I do like Cinossu's way of uploading times as it's probably less hackable, but then your restricted to that one emulator.