Sonic and Sega Retro Message Board: nineko - Viewing Profile - Sonic and Sega Retro Message Board

I know this idea has already been brought up in the past, but it never got a definite answer (afaik), and I'd like to hear some opinions about this, including obviously E-122-Psi's.

Basically, he made a ton and a half of "SOMEONE in Sonic 1" hacks, which are good and all, don't misread me, I love them, but I was wondering about the possibility to combine them all into a greater "everyone in Sonic 1" megahack, possibly with E-122-Psi sharing his source codes with a trusted Tech Member¹ for global optimisation and integration, maybe with a Character Select screen à la Sonic Triple Trouble.

Discuss, or trash on E-122-Psi's request if inappropriate.

Note 1: not me, I'm not trusted, and I barely know more ASM than "cmpi and beq"

Basically, I want to implement something on one of the websites I manage. Before anyone asks, no, I can't easily use a database due to the nature of the project, even if I'm aware that a database would be the optimal solution, so moving on.

I will have a lot of data to deal with; it has a magnitude of many hundreds / few thousands of lines, with a dozen or two of fields. Since the data is going to be very repetitive by nature I'm thinking to use one or more arrays as LUTs and store all the data as numbers to save space, and also because the data will need to be filterable by most (if not all) the fields. Now, here's my question.

Amongst the fields there will be date fields, e.g. year, month, day, (hour, minute). Which is why I'm wondering: should I keep the thousands of lines within a same file and perform a lot of IFs over them, or should I maybe split the data by hand in smaller files? I explain.

Case 1:
all_data.csv
-> lots of IFs

Case 2:
2014.csv
2015.csv
-> the year filter can be applied "outside" with a FOR, while IFs for month and day will still apply

Case 3:
201501.csv
201502.csv
-> both year and month filters can be applied "outside"

Case 4:
20150101.csv
20150102.csv
-> all the date is filtered outside (with nested FORs or DOs or something); however, this would lead to 365 files per year, most of which with 0 or few lines.

So I'm wondering. Which is easier on the server? Lots of IFs, or lots of FOPENs?

Since I'm generating the data from another program I wrote it wouldn't be a problem to split it differently. What I can't do is feed that data into a database with an automatic procedure, so yeah. Which is the best plan B?

I scanned it for smspower, but I guess it won't hurt if I submit it to Sega Retro as well.

https://dl.dropboxus...GameGearBox.zip (18655254 bytes).

I scanned it for smspower, but I guess it won't hurt if I submit it to Sega Retro as well.



So, this catalog has 28 pages; the central 4 are about a Karaoke system developed by Giochi Preziosi itself, not related to Sega at all, so they can be removed (I included those pages in the archive anyway, for completeness).

The catalog is also filled with typos and whatnot. Many Italians are dumb when it comes to computers and don't know how to type uppercase vowels with accents (e.g. À or È), and I see things like A' or E' sadly way more often than I'd like to. What's weird is that they started it right on the first two pages, then they probably got bored or something since they did it wrong most of the times (and there are some És which should have been Ès, meh).

Quick synopsis.
1 cover;
2-3 stuff about the "Sonic Badge" which could make you win things;
4-5 stuff about a promotion tied to a soccer TV show (vote for the best scored goal and win things). Roberto Mancini is an Italian former soccer player, current trainer;
6-7 stuff about the Mega Drive. Jerry Calà is an Italian comedian;
8-9-10-11 Mega Drive games. Walter Zenga is an Italian former goalkeeper;
12-17 stuff about the Master System II Plus;
13-14-15-16 stuff about the "Canta Tu" (literally: "Sing You", more realistically "You Sing") Karaoke system, not by Sega;
18-19-20-21 Master System games (interesting screenshot of the 16-bit version of Sonic 2);
22-23 stuff about the Game Gear. Gianluigi Lentini is an Italian former soccer player. Interesting typo: "risolzione" should be "risoluzione" (roughly, it's like they wrote "resoltion" instead of "resolution");
24-25-26 Game Gear games (yet another screenshot of the 16-bit version of Sonic 2);
27 boring stuff;
28 back cover.

https://dl.dropboxus...iosi_1992Q4.zip (70945877 bytes). I scanned it at 300 DPI instead of 600, to prevent the filesize from skyrocketing. Trivia: this is a rare case of archive which is smaller in zip format, as the files actually become bigger if rar compression is attempted.

If more detailed transcriptions / translations are required, just ask.

By clicking on certain cards in certain ways, it's possible to duplicate other cards or make them disappear:


No I don't have more informations about this, hence why I wrote "certain cards" and "certain ways", I managed to do this by random but I could replicate it by mashing the mouse buttons on various cards for a while. I wonder if anyone knows more about this?

edit:

Here's another example:


It's barely visible behind the 2 of spades, but see how an orange card has been pulled instead of the 2 of clubs. Also, the score should be $208, not $238, since -$52 + (52 × $5) = $208, there are $30 in excess, equivalent to 6 nonexisting cards o.O