Joined: 9/13/2008
Posts: 30
Some of these are a bit obvious and/or lame, I suppose. Mega Man 2: Some Like It Hot: Clear Heat Man's stage without using Item-2. Mega Man 3: Top Gun: Defeat 50 enemies with Top Spin. Mega Man 4-6: Kickin' It Old School: Clear the game without charging the mega-buster. Super Mario Bros. 3: Hammer Time: Get Hammer Bros. Suit, complete game without losing it or changing powerups It Ain't Easy Bein' Green: Get Frog Suit, complete game without losing it or changing powerups Super Metroid: Ceres Defender: "Defeat" Ridley in the Ceres Station by landing 100 hits. Sequence Breaking 101: Get Super Missiles before (or without) defeating Spore Spawn.
Player (121)
Joined: 2/11/2007
Posts: 1522
gia wrote:
it looks like when lua runs you can't control the emulator and have to wait until it is finished
You can definitely have a script running and have the player control the emulator at the same time. You can't run two scripts at the same time though, as far as I know.
I make a comic with no image files and you should read it. While there is a lower class, I am in it, and while there is a criminal element I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free. -Eugene Debs
Active player (328)
Joined: 2/23/2005
Posts: 786
ElectroSpecter wrote:
My thoughts on optimal achievement breakdowns, having been an X360 achievement junkie for a few years:
Not everybody aims for every achievement. Sure, we all start out a game thinking we will, and we do have that nagging feeling of incompleteness if we can't pull off the top-tier ones, but eventually we just move on to a different game and become satisfied/complacent with our efforts. However, these are oldschool games we're talking about. These games have been played to death by people for twenty years. People know these games like the back of their hand. These games are dear to many peoples' hearts, and those people will probably never get bored with them no matter how many times they replay the game. For those people who just enjoy the game that much, there are extra achievements to aim for, the challenge runs and the self-imposed challenges. For the rest of us, we can attain the lower-level ones for beating / completeing the game and be satisfied at that. Besides, what fun would it be if we only made achievements that we knew everybody could obtain?
gia wrote:
Would it be better if they were instead registered functions based on ram watch like mode or breakpoint mode perhaps?
I'd imagine that, from the achievement scriper's point of view, we would just need a way to tell if a line of code has been executed, we wouldn't necessarily need to break before the frame is done drawing. So perhaps flags could simply registered to lines of code, and set to True if they have been executed that frame, false if they have not. So this kind of logic could be used after a standard frame.
If executedcode(pipe_sub) //A pipe was entered
    If  world_number = 1 & level_number = 2 & level_page = 14 Then
        // Warp zone was used. Disable "Warpless" achievements.
Player (246)
Joined: 8/6/2006
Posts: 784
Location: Connecticut, USA
CtrlAltDestroy wrote:
Sure, we all start out a game thinking we will, and we do have that nagging feeling of incompleteness if we can't pull off the top-tier ones, but eventually we just move on to a different game and become satisfied/complacent with our efforts.
Oh god I wish this was true for me =[ I actually created a new Gamertag at one point because my friend downloaded and played a game that I cannot get all of the achievements for. I'm pretty bad about it. EDIT: Yes, a Live gamertag, meaning I payed for it. =X
gia
Player (109)
Joined: 5/3/2006
Posts: 223
That's too much I think, when it happened to me I just took note of the achs so I can "get" them later without the unlocked message. I managed to get mozilla's javascript engine working this time on snes9x, and also can contact my server and login. So technically everything can be done now provided I don't introduce memory leaks with the js engine. I need a way to match a rom loaded to a unique identifier that represents that rom (included its unique memory map), since a script would not work if due to version differences or ips file the memory is mapped differently. Any ideas? CRC is unique most of the time, but what if it isn't... Or do I go simple and just use the filename? If someone can make a javascript code/pseudocode with memory addresses to check for something simple that can be "achieved" multiple times with ease on mario or some snes game that would be cool.
Player (246)
Joined: 8/6/2006
Posts: 784
Location: Connecticut, USA
Ever since this topic came up, I've sort of thought about how it could be implemented. Personally, I feel that the only way this would work would be to structure it in such a way that there is very little incentive for cheating. As I think was mentioned in this thread, http://backloggery.com/ is a website that keeps track of which games you own, and which of them you've beaten / completed. The whole thing is on the honor system, and since there's no real type of leaderboard, there's not much reason to lie. Even if you do, people typically won't care / even notice you. I see this idea implemented as a nicely designed website, handled the following way: • There's an official list of games, provided by the maintainers of the site. Requests for additional / missing games can be requested and reviewed before being added. • Achievement lists have a max number of achievements, say 50. Perhaps games will start out with a 'vanilla' list of achievements, but any additional achievements are user submitted. Users can up or down-vote each achievement, so that each list will eventually reflect the community's current ideas on what constitutes the 'best' list. Achievements that get bumped off the bottom of the list go into some sort of repository and can potentially get upvoted enough to get back on the list. • Saying you earned an achievement is on the honor system. You'd probably have a progress bar for each game you start, and whenever you check off an Achievement it fills up a little. You can also switch to detailed view. People serious about this would probably live stream their games like they do on backloggery. • As I mentioned, no leaderboard, and no way to search for something like, "who has the most achievements / highest # of completed games," etc. • Able to add friends and comments and stuff like Backloggery. Anyway, if I had the skill, time, resources, and wherewithal to pull off a website like this, I think I would. It seems like it might work, and I for one would be happy with it.
Player (246)
Joined: 8/6/2006
Posts: 784
Location: Connecticut, USA
retroachievements.org It seems someone was listening.
Sir_VG
He/Him
Player (40)
Joined: 10/9/2004
Posts: 1914
Location: Floating Tower
Too bad the registration emails never seem to come though and the contact address fails, but at least registration is active and achivos work. Kinda fun to go back and play the old classics this way. I've got ideas for achievements for one game, but trying to figure out how to make them work will be difficult, since I've never really understood RAM watching.
Taking over the world, one game at a time. Currently TASing: Nothing
Chamale
He/Him
Player (182)
Joined: 10/20/2006
Posts: 1355
Location: Canada
The site seems to be down now. Did someone post it to Reddit for an accidental DDoS?
fsvgm777
She/Her
Senior Publisher, Player (226)
Joined: 5/28/2009
Posts: 1217
Location: Luxembourg
From their most recent news post: "Sorry everyone for the recent prolonged downtime - Amazon changed their atlantic IP addresses, and we were caught in the sweep. Hopefully this should mean a return to normal now, but if you get any problems, please leave me a message on our facebook group. Apologies again! ~~Scott, 06 Aug 2014, 09:11"
Steam Community page - Bluesky profile Oh, I'm just a concerned observer.
Joined: 8/24/2014
Posts: 1
Retro Achievements is a community effort. You can make achievements yourself or suggest them in the game's thread. Learning how to make them isn't very tough, but can be tricky setting up or even impossible depending on the achievement and game. If you have any questions, feel free to ask in the forums or chat. There's leaderboard support as well. For example, I did some work on Super Metroid leaderboards here, using the in-game timers. Ceres Escape, Any%, 100%. I've done the same for many other games such as SMK, GBA metroids, DKC2/3... Hardcore mode is an option in the emulator's menu, which lets you earn double points from achievements you unlock at the cost of disabling savestates. There's a bunch of statistical features on the site to see as well. A very small taste: Badges with a gold outline were earned on Hardcore. There's been some debate on how the gold outline looks, but we haven't come up with a good replacement. There's only one guy setting up the site and the emulator integration, so it's going pretty well. Note: We want to avoid achievements that require glitches, though exploits like spamming 1ups from goomba kills in SMB3 are welcome. Abusing glitches to get good leaderboard entries is accepted as well.