Weekly/Monthly Arcade Retro Challenge

[damageinc86]

In the vein of the retro-achievement feature, I was thinking back to my hyperspin days and just remembered that on their forums they have a Hyperscore challenge that lets the community compete against each other on whatever arcade game was chosen.  This was a really fun way to engage each other, so what if Launchbox could do this in-program? Maybe do it bi-monthly, or every week, or monthly, depending on what feels best.  When you start up launchbox maybe it could be in that news/info window that pops up?, or since that can be disabled and people might not see it, maybe it could be in a small status bar/ticker at some spot in the window.  For BigBox I don't know, something selectable somewhere to quickly jump to details about the challenge.  Since the program can't read the scores (can it?) there would have to be a submission system of some sort.  This might be the hardest part.  But anyways, just an idea that might be fun to try to pull off someday.  Then you could also get your retro-achievement for high scores/placements in the retro-challenge also. 

[Lordmonkus]

I agree that something like this would be an interesting feature if it could be built into Launchbox somehow but the specifics of what and how would be the trick.

I like the overall idea though.

[kmoney]

I really think its a great idea and would love to see it implemented. It really does sound like a fun way to engage with the members of the community. Make take a little work to figure out all the details but sounds like a lot of fun.

[Rincewind]

This would be a great feature and I'm sure a lot of people would give it a go each time. It will be great to have a challenge on a game that were less familiar with too. I vote it as the next top feature to be implemented  that and the 3d engine @Jason Carr

[damageinc86]

Yeah, we used to do screenshots in MAME and then upload those to the thread, and I think that would really be the only way to do it unless there's some way for launchbox to get into mame while it's running and see what the score was at the end?  Probably not huh.  Or maybe there could be instructions on how to take a screenshot at the end of your game (I think it was just F12 or something), and then launchbox could scrape those screenshot folders that are I think named after the romname in the mame folder structure.  For retroarch I think you could still look at a screenshot folder for mame games right?  Then if you hit submit screenshot, then launchbox runs through that and uploads those to somewhere to be looked at.  Don't know if you could make the sifting process automatic, that's another big one, they'd have to be looked at somehow.

[Jason Carr]

Yeah, the real challenge here is the integration with the games/emulators. Everything is possible of course but it would take me forever to get into the emulator code enough to hook into it, and we'd probably have to use modified emulators, etc. Still, I'd love that myself too; it'd be a ton of fun. The retro achievements integration that is coming is a step in the right direction though.

[damageinc86]

Yeah maybe scraping the screenshots folder and getting it that way would be easier, with just instructions on how to take a screenshot for mame and Ra since those are the most widely used ones.  Still have to have a team that sifts through it though I'd guess. Unless there's a way to do an ocr type thing in order to "see" which score is in-line with the hiscore text line.

[Zombeaver]

+1 for this. I'd love to see something like this, personally.

I suppose we could always just start up a challenge thread in the meantime and go with the honor system

[nikeymikey]

+1 from me as well.

Id love to take part in this.