Automatic ranking website

[anzymus]

Hi everyone,

Since few weeks, we (at shmup.com : french community) are using a dedicated website to replace forum rankings.
You can see the result here.

The principle is very simple. As you did, we created one topic by game and manually update each ranking when new scores appeared.
It was painful for all authors of theses topics.

I'm a web developer, and I wanted to create a custom product for my shmuper friends. (As I did for the NeoGeo games).

So, I developed this site, and we were migrating data (about 50 games) for few weeks.
Each member of our forum is automatically logged-in on this system. He/She can post his/her scores, and rankings are updated in realtime.
To keep the ranking in each topic, a generated picture is available for each game and we include it in topics. You can see an exemple with Mushihimesama's topic

I just wanted to inform you, maybe you'll want to reproduce this thing for your needs. The code is open-source (Java, Play2, MySQL).

May the shmups be with you.

[Despatche]

there's nothing "painful" about updating threads, people are just overly lazy. this is shmup/s, we're not exactly getting submissions every five seconds.

if you make an automated website (and we already have a great one that isn't even plagued by open source), you remove all the fun of making a thread in a bulletin board and the discussions that come with it. if you make an automated first post as you've done, you get something that is unflexible plus unmaintainable by design and/or will require about the same work as just editing the first post.

that is why i never have and never will "trust" automated solutions... there's no attention paid to these important details.

[anzymus]

Actually, after submission of your score you have à pre-generated message that you can post directly to the dedicated thread of the game. The goal of this site is to simplify updates. All conversations, tips, taunts still stay in the forum.This site is à tool with cool stuff (average score, leaderboards, statistics).

[CStarFlare]

It's very nice. Certainly much prettier than Restart Syndrome, and it looks like you've retained the social aspects of forum leaderboards while improving the scoreboard aspect.

I certainly believe that automated scoreboards are the way to go. Much more reliable and flexible.

Edit: will explore the site more a little later, but at the moment I'm getting errors when I try to open the games list.

[cools]

Looks nice. But you need to resize your images correctly rather than having the browser do it!

Oh, and host them on your own server.

[Despatche]

i can safely assume that these automated scoreboards are being asked for and made because the genre is popular enough to warrant it, which also means that these scores need to be taken seriously and that accuracy is the very first goal. but accuracy is always irrelevant even then, right? well, that's because the genre isn't that popular, and because people are overly lazy.

if it is somehow the case that the genre is so popular, an automated system is still completely unflexible and unmaintainable unless you are willing to code specifically for every single game and willing to go over all this code in case you made a system-wide mistake. if it is not the case, then there's no need for automated scoreboards to begin with as it would always be far more effort than tossing up some quick shit thread to begin with.

those who dare to deal with this code may as well either consult me about all of these details, or give every single shmup scoreboard everywhere to me. i seem to be the only one who understands how truly low-effort the actual updating is, and how very important some of these details are. i am not joking, i am not boasting, and i am not lying.

what you've made is not an evolution, but a side-step in an attempt to dodge an immobile obstacle isn't actually an obstacle to begin with.

cue all the whining about me supposedly whining about becoming "irrelevant", as if that has anything to do with accuracy and caring and all those other concepts that actually matter.

[anzymus]

I don't want to change your habits. Shmupers and scorers are little communities. I just wanted to share with you what we've done. Games like Mushihime have so many scores that our topic owners wanted to simplify their work. Now they can spend their time to play and discuss.

Ps:
Of course the ranking picture I talked about previously is automatically updated on topics. There is no technical things to do after embedded it.

[-S.L-]

I don't think Despatche has a clear idea of how amazing this system is, and most importantly, why it has been done.

there's nothing "painful" about updating threads, people are just overly lazy. this is shmup/s, we're not exactly getting submissions every five seconds

it's not painful, it's just annoying, especially when a board is very busy, and yeah some people are lazy, but some are busy as well.
Maybe you don't have submissions every five seconds just because owners of high scores topics are just not updating scores fast enough, and therefor, it's completly not encouraging for players to give their scores, knowing that THEIR efforts is actually not rewarded.

I'm myself a scorer more than a 1CC player, and I get very frustrated not so see my freshly made score not updated for weeks if not months.
My best exemple is the Dodonpachi Saidaioujou topic, where I put some score there, and still waiting them to be updated. I'm not talking about some small scores but high. That's why I play those games. So I want a little recognition of my "work" But the owner of this topic, Bonus!, is not doing his job, I don't blame him, it's just really annoying to update, I know it's annoying, because I had a topic on the french board myself of Mushi Futari, and IT WAS really annoying whenever someone posted a new score, but I always updated it, just a matter of manners and respect for the players.

But Despatche, tell me, why don't you take care of all score topics then if it's not that difficult or too much work ?

Trust me, that thing is maybe not the revolution in the shmup world, you don't call it evolution, but I would call it a VERY handy tool that saves times to topic's owner and makes every single player happy to see their score updated in REAL TIME ON this board.

Ask anyone in the french board if they would go back to the old fashion way, nobody will tell you it was better before. French community is very active and in my opinion very credible with superplayers that also supported and using this system, I don't even need to mention their names, you probably know.

And now I bet my balls on the table right now, that if you ask your members if they wished to see their scores updated in real time on this board, you can be sure that they will all say YES , FINALLY !!

[nasty_wolverine]

anzymus, just saw the website. Its awesome, really cool features with a really neat interface. I am thinking combined hiscore board between here and the french boards.

[Softdrink 117]

I think that overall this is a good idea, and that it's pretty well implemented. But I can also see how there can be some logistical concerns, especially with regard to formatting of scores between different games.

A combined shmup.com/shmups.system11 scoreboard would be pretty cool though.

[anzymus]

I'm working on a XML export if you want retrieve our database and work with it.
You are able to import our scores automatically with embbeding generated pictures like this :

Viewpoint


I see there is a background problem, I'll fix it.

[CStarFlare]

Dynamic pictures - interesting. I've always thought dynamic banners for signatures would be a nice addition to Restart Syndrome, but when I tried googleing for instructions it looked over my head.

If you're ever interested, I could dump the game details (modes, stages, ships, etc) out of Restart Syndrome. Game specifics can be time consuming to compile, especially for less popular games. (For example, I had to watch Let's Plays of every Parodius Da port to determine the difference between each)

[anzymus]

Dynamic Pictures is a perfect solution to solve "Topic Update" problem. I have to use Java2D to produce every images. Once generated, it stays in cache until ranking is invalidated by a new score.

Here you can get a backup of the database.

Thank you for your proposal about game details, fortunately shmup.com members help me for this part.

I can see that Restart syndrome is done with PHP, I'm sure you'll find a library to generate picture.

[Wyrmnus]

Kinda confused with the layout because alot of the menus are in French? There an english option?

[anzymus]

You should see the english version, it depends on your browser configuration.

As a workaround :

Jeux=Games
Joueurs=Players
Rang=Rank

[Wyrmnus]

Ive confirmed my browser's language settings are indeed set to English. You sure its not something on your end? I'm really interested in joining up on your site

[Bonus!]

My best exemple is the Dodonpachi Saidaioujou topic, where I put some score there, and still waiting them to be updated. I'm not talking about some small scores but high. That's why I play those games. So I want a little recognition of my "work" But the owner of this topic, Bonus!, is not doing his job, I don't blame him, it's just really annoying to update, I know it's annoying, because I had a topic on the french board myself of Mushi Futari, and IT WAS really annoying whenever someone posted a new score, but I always updated it, just a matter of manners and respect for the players.

I wasn't aware that it's *that* important to you to have new hi-scores frequently updated. I do think that you are blowing this out of proportion. The SDOJ thread has been very slow for weeks, hence I prefer to let some new scores accumulating before updating the tables. Right now, all it takes is skimming about one page of posts, so it's still very easy for you to assess were you rank, relative to other people on this forum. I will update the scores later today, though.

And now I bet my balls on the table right now, that if you ask your members if they wished to see their scores updated in real time on this board, you can be sure that they will all say YES , FINALLY !!

I think you would have a point if there were dozens of people submitting scores every day, but given the very low activity on hi score threads, it's at best a minor inconvenience.

[Bonus!]

Nice website. A note regarding SDOJ: the X360 mode should be split between shot/laser/expert since there is a significant difference in difficulty. On the other hand, on Novice/Arcade/Arcade HD, shot and laser have the same difficulty.

[-S.L-]

Bonus, nothing against you mate, just like I said, I can understand it's annoying to update, especially when there are a lot of scores coming out. So it's all good, people like me like to have it asap, while others maybe don't care.

About the fact that scoring topics are not very active, I kinda get it why, all the topic are not up to date just like I said it's not encouraging to score when there isn't update or competition.

Our french board is a lot more active than your international board ! There must be a problem.

Or it is not what people look for in their player's life, or they are not motivated to post scores beacuse of what I said or they are just shitty players

And I know that the last option is defenetly not happenning here.

So ?

[Bonus!]

Our french board is a lot more active than your international board ! There must be a problem.

It could well be that the people on this board only submit scores when they've gotten reasonably close to clearing the game, or only after they've 1cc'd it with a good score, while on that French site it seems that a lot of people post work-in-progress scores, like a stage 2 or stage 3 score, which seems relatively uncommon on here.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

There's also a lot of threads where people rarely post, maybe one new score every few months or so, if even that. There are several games where updates are weeks in between and where the person managing the thread specifically requests you PM him if an update is needed because you've posted a huge improvement score. It's not really unreasonable for people managing the scoreboards to take a while inbetween updates, especially what with December being a busy holiday month for a lot of folks. If you want a scoreboard updated ASAP, worse comes to worse send a polite PM if it's been a while.

I'm not talking about some small scores but high. That's why I play those games. So I want a little recognition of my "work"

Recognition? You don't need the scoreboard to be updated to get that - the people who care about the scores for a particular game often check the new scores posted in a recent thread. Case in point - the SDOJ topic. A week after your clear, Iconoclast posted a massive, mind-blowing score, people noticed. You don't need the score thread to be updated right away for you to feel good about your own achievement.

What happens if someone tries to post an invalid score, like a Progear or DoDonpachi score where the first digit is a non-zero number (i.e. for games that increase score by 1 for using a continue)?

[Shalashaska]

It looks really nice; well done!

[chum]

I posted some scores including an incorrect one that I can't remove. It's a Touhou 6 Demo score which was supposed to be Full score

[anzymus]

I posted some scores including an incorrect one that I can't remove. It's a Touhou 6 Demo score which was supposed to be Full score

Hi chum,

1) go to http://hiscores.shmup.com/player/584
2) Click on your incorrect score
3) Correct it
4) Submit the form
5) Enjoy