Hey folks, as you know club has been hard at work on the new tdc-arcade and OMG its going to be great! I am still whiping the water from my face!
Anyway, since for now the games for the arcade need to be open sourced, i was wondering if anyone would like to submit any launch day games that people can play right away. It can be a new or one of your older games. Only me and club will be seeing your source, we need to do that to add our security code and the highscoring system.
You can dc mail me with the link for the game if you would like to see it up. However we are a little more picky for the dc-arcade games, so not all games can be put on there. A game needs to be of a good quality and have the arcade-high score system in mind.
Question, comments? Post them here
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Oh and to be clear the dc-arcade is not just a page with a highscore system slapped on some games, oh no, we are doing things right and are going above and beyond, it is going to take the entire site in a new direction, I cant go into details just yet but expect to be pretty darn excited about this when we share the details
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I wonder how it'll work... Will the games need to utilize vitalize?
Also, do you want them to be exclusive to the arcade, or could people also release a normal .exe version?
Yep they will be vitalized for online play. People can still release a regular version as a exe but that version would not be tied in with the arcade system.
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We'll insert a prebuilt frame for handling the scores, just let us know which value in your game contains the score (i.e. the default is Score of Player 1) and if there are any other special requirements
although im working on my own achievments type thing so all my future games can be scored and recorded and ranked online.
so probably just rework my current #puzzle for the dc arcade.
Hmm, I can probably fix up swarm striker or one of it's children for the DC arcade. Now that baby/hospital craziness is over I should have some more time.
Originally Posted by OldManClayton Yea right. Elizabeth is going to eat your time up like crazy.
She's at that point where she just sleeps, eats, and poops. Making something new isn't an option, but fixing up and older project in a few hours could work.
I want to make something for this, but I wont rush it. I don't want to see tons of buggy horrible mini games really.
So when I get around to it it will be something nice, Promise.
Originally Posted by Jason Orme i'm guessing games with external files are out of the question then. i.e Mp3s.
I'd like to know too. Would it be possible to add a level to a game every week, by uploading an about 150kb array to your server? The score would be sum of every level score. This way, people would have to come back to keep their score high.
1. Is it possible to create a co-op mode in a DC-arcade game? Either 2 players on the same pc or 2 players across the internet? I guess this is a Vitalize question too.
2. If wanted to make a downloadable version of my game would it be possible to connect to TDC and submit high scores to the arcade?
(sorry if there's a newer topic about this or some annoucement which I've missed...)
How's this going forward? What I saw earlier in April-May(?) in the beta test phase was simply awesome. Is the development still going on and when could we expect a public release of DC Arcade?
Clubby recently added some new features and updates to the arcade, so it's still in development. Not really sure when it'll be fully ready - only Clubby would know
This just reminded me of that Shootemup i was going to make for this. I stopped working on it because of lack of information regarding how the dc arcade worked.
Originally Posted by AndyUK not as simple as that, i want to know what features are included before I actually make a game that supports them. If you get what I mean.
The TDC Arcade won't be supporting any live multiplayer or co-op as far as I know, so no OINC or MOO. You won't be able to save files or anything either, especially since it's Vitalize. Imagine you were making a game for a cabinet arcade machine like Galaga or Pole Position, only with more graphic options and no high-score tables (those are built into the arcade itself).
That would really not be a good idea since the whole point is for a quick arcade fix to earn more points then the guy before you. When you see the Arcade I think you will know what we mean
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Yeah. Challenger A could password their way to the last level and get a high score from killing the final boss, while Challenger B spends more time playing, but only gets to level 3 and doesn't nail those bonus points from the boss.
Actually, though, I don't see why a password system would hurt if (and only if) the scoring system penalizes you for starting from a later level. On the other hand, though, this would require games with passwords to be checked on a case-by-case basis, which may not be the most handy thing for the quality-checkers.
The basic requirements at the moment are as follows:
• Games must be ideally within 640x480, some exceptions may be made
• All music/graphics/resources must be internal, e.g. no use of the DirectX extension to play mp3s
• Extensions are limited to those supported under Vitalize for MMF2 (Older extensions, e.g. Direction Calc for MMF 1.2/1.5 may not be converted for MMF): http://www.clickteam.com/epicenter/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=63860#Post63860
• Size should be kept down if possible, limit is around 10mb when compiled as a ccn file, but please keep in mind that large downloads may discourage players
• There must be no cheat systems, or systems that allow players to illegally increase their scores
• No JavaScript may be used
The following parameters are provided and can be retrieved by accessing the environment variables:
• "user" : Display name of player, for personalisation
• "score1" : top score
• "score2" : 2nd score
• "score3" : 3rd score.. etc, for the top 10 scores
• "shigh" : Highest Score
• "savg" : Average Score
We'll insert frames at the start, and end of the game for the two frames needed for the arcade
Please make sure you let us know where to retrieve the final score from, ideally this should be stored in Score of Player 1, this can be set at the end of the level if you're using a counter, for example
Intro screens should ideally be skippable, as the game is typically restarted once the score is submitted
And of course, we're always happy to take ideas into account, if there's anything you'd like to see, and features you'd enjoy, let us know
Could there be an option for other variables to be stored with a player's high score? For example, in games that let you choose from different characters, it would be neat if the player's chosen character appeared next to their score. This would also open the door for some interesting statistics about players, since game makers can track common features among the top scorers of their games (for example, if everyone on the top 10 scores is using the same character, or if a large number of players died at a particular level).
Also, you might want to take racing games into account, where players who have the lowest score (time) are ranked better than those who have a higher score. Although I guess if you wanted to be clever about that, the score could start at a predetermined value and then decrease as time increases.
hmmm, now to figure out how to get the mods i'm using as music internal I read that as long as you upload the external mod files in the same dir as the ccn it can play them?
ok cool, the mfa I sent you has a mod player by josh whelchel that is vitalized as far as i'm aware (if not please correct me!) but I forgot to send you the actual mod files the game uses...resending!
Originally Posted by Rhys D hmmm, now to figure out how to get the mods i'm using as music internal I read that as long as you upload the external mod files in the same dir as the ccn it can play them?
It's definitely possible to internally store mods without supplying them in an extra directory.
With MMF2 you can open .mod files and play them as if you were playing a sample. Then in the properties of your application you would select "include external files"