Rocks'n'Diamonds 4.3.0.0 Release Candidate 6 released!

[Holger]

Release candidate 6 of R'n'D 4.3.0.0 is available now:

https://www.artsoft.org/RELEASES/linux/ ... rc6.tar.gz (Linux)
https://www.artsoft.org/RELEASES/mac/ro ... .0-rc6.dmg (Mac)
https://www.artsoft.org/RELEASES/window ... -win32.zip (Windows / 32 bit)
https://www.artsoft.org/RELEASES/window ... -win64.zip (Windows / 64 bit)
https://www.artsoft.org/RELEASES/androi ... .0-rc6.apk (Android)

Or in a web browser:

https://staging.artsoft.org/rocksndiamonds/play

Main changes since RC5:

- extended setup option to also offer showing server scores only
- re-added using level number sub-directories when saving score tapes
- added sending level set name when getting scores from server

The last addition is used to find scores for a level set by level set name (as written in file "levelinfo.conf") if no scores can be found for the level set identifier (which effectively is the level set's directory name, which could be different to what the score server thinks is the level set identifier). (I have also improved the score server when uploading scores accordingly, so if scores are uploaded for level sets with unknown identifier (directory name), the server also has a look at the level name to match a potentially already existing level set on the server, to validate the uploaded score tape against.)

With the extended setup option to control which score types are shown in the Hall of Fame (only local scores, only server scores, or both local and server scores), you can now easily check if your scores have been approved by the score server. At the moment, quite a number of level sets are not yet existing on the server, so scores for these level sets are currently not approved. I will add these level sets in the next days (if possible) and trigger a re-validation of all scores that have been rejected due to missing level sets, so many missing scores will probably be approved then. You can easily check which levels sets have been added in the "Levelsets" section of the score server.

As always, the web interface of the test score server can be accessed here:

https://api-test.artsoft.org/

Please let me know of any problems or findings you might encounter with this release candidate. If all is fine, I think that this could finally become the official release version.

[Holger]

Important notice!

I've just found and fixed a fatal crash bug in RC6 (introduced by one of the changes listed above)!

Packages have just been updated -- please re-download them again!

Thanks!

[BryanFRitt]

the web interface of the test score server can be accessed here:

https://api-test.artsoft.org/

Please let me know of any problems or findings you might encounter with this release candidate. If all is fine, I think that this could finally become the official release version.

For privacy perhaps the 'Created' column should be empty, except for one's own data.

[Holger]

For privacy perhaps the 'Created' column should be removed, except for those that created it.

Do you really think that the score creation time is or could be a privacy concern? If so, I can remove it from the public interface.

What do you mean by "except for those that created it"? Currently there are no user logins defined (other than my own "admin" account), so I currently can see no way to show "private" database columns only for the creators of database records.

(However, I already thought about adding a way to login with player name and player UUID, for example, so players could see details of the score entries they have submitted. But not sure yet if this is a good idea or not...)

Please let me know of any other privacy or other concerns that you might have with the API web interface.

[armanelgtron]

I have a similar feature on another site, but with more vague times such as "3 minutes ago" and "2 months ago". Perhaps that could be done here. In fact, while I'm mentioning it I'd say a lot of stuff could be implemented like the ability to click on a level and get a list of ranks only associated with that level, click on a name and get the ranks only associated with the name, perhaps even map previews and ratings - but I figured it was only a test site, which wouldn't need to be fancy

[Holger]

I have a similar feature on another site

Code: Select all

$ host racing.armanelgtron.tk
Host racing.armanelgtron.tk not found: 2(SERVFAIL)

Oops?!

but with more vague times such as "3 minutes ago" and "2 months ago". Perhaps that could be done here

Yes, that sounds good. Or what about simply displaying the date only, but omitting the exact time? Also seems to be a good choice to me.

In fact, while I'm mentioning it I'd say a lot of stuff could be implemented like the ability to click on a level and get a list of ranks only associated with that level, click on a name and get the ranks only associated with the name, perhaps even map previews and ratings

Definitely yes!

In fact, I also had a lot of similar or same ideas about that site -- there are many cool things that could be done, once it's up and running and getting data from the game!

but I figured it was only a test site, which wouldn't need to be fancy

That's right, but it's more something of a prototype -- when 4.3.0.0 finally comes out (hopefully Real Soon Now[tm]), the non-testing site will look exactly the same first. But it does not have to stay that way, of course!

[BryanFRitt]

but with more vague times such as "3 minutes ago" and "2 months ago". Perhaps that could be done here

Two quotes:

What Has Been Seen Cannot Be Unseen.

and

“Welcome to Fight Club. The first rule of Fight Club is: You do not talk about Fight Club. The second rule of Fight Club is: You DO NOT talk about Fight Club!

[Holger]

... and what I also wanted to say today:

Thanks a lot to all beta-testers of the new R'n'D with score server support! You have been really, really helpful!

This is especially true as many ideas, problems, limitations and changes will become a lot more complicated to handle once the new version is out in the wild. You really helped to point me to things I should change or improve!

The last step of the beta-test I am just about to work on is adding as many level sets as possible that are missing from the current collection of level sets on the server (which are needed to be able to verify submitted scores by automatically replaying score tapes). Another problem was scores and score tapes for identical level sets, but with different level set identifiers, that should be handled as the same level set, of course, which should now also be handled as expected (at least for newly submitted scores).

Thanks again!

[armanelgtron]

I have a similar feature on another site

Code: Select all

$ host racing.armanelgtron.tk
Host racing.armanelgtron.tk not found: 2(SERVFAIL)

Oops?!

Code: Select all

$ host racing.armanelgtron.tk
racing.armanelgtron.tk has address 104.21.81.215
racing.armanelgtron.tk has address 172.67.165.55
racing.armanelgtron.tk has IPv6 address 2606:4700:3033::6815:51d7
racing.armanelgtron.tk has IPv6 address 2606:4700:3035::ac43:a537

*shrug*

[Holger]

I have a similar feature on another site

Works now!

Or what about simply displaying the date only, but omitting the exact time?

Only dates are displayed now, but not the time anymore. That should do it!

[BryanFRitt]

I maybe the only one that thinks this way, but when I see something like '00:00:00', the first think I think of is 'time of day' and not a 'duration'. A 'duration' to me would look more like '00h00m00s'. [where '00' represents an integer]

In the 'Scores' chart, at first glance, it looks like 'time' represents 'time of day', not 'how long it took to complete the level for this run'.

[BryanFRitt]

I have a similar feature on another site

Works now!

Or what about simply displaying the date only, but omitting the exact time?

Only dates are displayed now, but not the time anymore. That should do it!

Say someone has something what they might like to call a overbearing 'significant other', 'parent', 'pimp', 'boss', 'alternate personality', 'guilty conscience', etc... and they see how many levels this person played on a specific day. They could be like, you played this game too much when you could have been...
[use your imagination on this ]

-

Idea: Sort by DateTime without showing the DateTime.

[Holger]

In the 'Scores' chart, at first glance, it looks like 'time' represents 'time of day', not 'how long it took to complete the level for this run'.

Maybe the header text "Time" is misleading here and should be replaced with "Duration"? Not sure. But I think that somebody else brought up this issue before. Maybe it should be displayed as "02m 53s" instead of "02:53"?

I had a look at how others do that when I implemented the tape recorder in R'n'D, and just checked again with some similar applications: Apple Quicktime player, VLC media player, Samsung video player (the one that is displayed when replaying a video in the photo gallery) -- interestingly, they all seem to use the same "12:34" format, either for showing the duration of videos that are not playing, and also to show the position of the currently playing videos. None used something like "12m 34s", or at least I did not find one. (Also searched for camcorder and video camera displays in Google image search, and indeed I was able to also find "00d 00h 00m 00s" displays, apparently on old VCRs, although most seem to use "00:00:00:00" instead. But most indeed used either "00:00" or "00:00:00" formats. Not sure if there may also be regional differences; wouldn't be the first time that European, American and/or Asian countries use different user interfaces here.)

Say someone has something what they might like to call a overbearing 'significant other', 'parent', 'pimp', 'boss', 'alternate personality', 'guilty conscience', etc... and they see how many levels this person played on a specific day. They could be like, you played this game too much when you could have been...
[use your imagination on this ]

That's very interesting, because I indeed thought about exactly this aspect of the score server, too! Mainly regarding someone's boss in the company where you try to appear to be at work (while playing R'n'D instead ... or writing forum posts ). Or regarding your girlfriend.

But then, I thought that I am just too paranoid maybe, as neither my boss nor my girlfriend would bother to look at the score server pages, not to mention that they would have to know my player alias name I am using in R'n'D. (And if I am really paranoid, I could use different players in R'n'D (with different names and UUIDs) when playing at work, or I can disable using the high score server at all -- or even submit my scores later by temporarily using a different player name, or whatever.)

What do others think about this?

Idea: Sort by DateTime without showing the DateTime.

BTW: It would also be possible to use the tape date instead of the upload date here, but this would only make a difference for older, already existing tapes (when mass-uploading all tapes); for newly recorded tapes (when the score server already is available), this would not make a difference.

What do others think here? Should the recording date be displayed for a score entry? Or should it be omitted?

[BryanFRitt]

In the 'Scores' chart, at first glance, it looks like 'time' represents 'time of day', not 'how long it took to complete the level for this run'.

Maybe the header text "Time" is misleading here and should be replaced with "Duration"? Not sure. But I think that somebody else brought up this issue before.

I looking up alternate phrases for the word 'duration', I found/thought of some other words that could be used: 'run', 'tour', 'span', 'duration', 'runtime', 'length', 'time-frame', 'playtime', 'completed in', 'completion time', 'completion duration', ... nothing feels like a perfect fit. Of these, my current vote is for 'completed in'.

Maybe it should be displayed as "02m 53s" instead of "02:53"?

With a space in-between makes it nicer to read.

00d 00h 00m 00s right aligned, and leading zero time unit(s) omitted, no leading zeros on first number. Like if it took less than a day, no 00d section, less than an hour, no 00h section, less than a minute no 00m section, if it took <=9 of a unit add 0 to the front unless it's a leading number, if it's less than a second show <1s (there should be no way it took less than 0 seconds to solve)

Above might have issues if the language of the person reading it doesn't use the same letters for the same time.

Another possibility, although it might be confusing for some, and what to use for hours/days?

angular units (' for minutes and " for seconds) are often used on sport watches.

https://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/ ... rting-time

[edit]Also, the user could decide what format they want it in.[/edit]

Shown times should be truncated down to the nearest second? (Newbie warning: Don't change any fractional seconds on the stored time)

What do others think here? Should the recording date be displayed for a score entry? Or should it be omitted?

I'm thinking removing the dates from everything on https://api-test.artsoft.org/ because for 'Scores' for the prior mentioned reasons, and the rest as well because it's probably not of much use, unless someone wants to do the research to determine when the levelsets, etc... were actually made, and then update these dates. If someone wants to do that, that would be cool.

I suspect 99.5% of time the tape score time won't be a problem for most people, but all those 0.5% of the time it's bad may be worse than all the gains by the 99.5% of the times it's good. (disclaimer: these statistics numbers are estimates off of the top of my head, and may not reflect actual reality statistics.)

There should be a prompt asking if it should submit tapes as it goes, instead of just assuming.

[BryanFRitt]

BTW: It would also be possible to use the tape date instead of the upload date here, but this would only make a difference for older, already existing tapes (when mass-uploading all tapes); for newly recorded tapes (when the score server already is available), this would not make a difference.

By tape date do you mean the datetime that the OS says it was last modified? I think this could be used for ranking in case of ties for high scores so long as the datetimes are in a valid range, and time zones are appropriately accounted for. Earlier wins higher spot. This is trusting the user's system times on these, it may be good to at least don't use this datetime if it is before R'n'D was released, or after the current datetime. In those cases use submission datetime for these. Make sure the datetime on the server is accurate enough. Sync time with a time server. Use UTC.