Would you guys be interested in High Score Save Kits with a Bonus?

[Luigi]

It's Wizard of Wor

To be honest, I don't see Dirk and me installing those kits on all our machines + 2 16port switches  
But for single cabs, why not.

[Tyrem]

It's Wizard of Wor

To be honest, I don't see Dirk and me installing those kits on all our machines + 2 16port switches  
But for single cabs, why not.

talked to jo a few minutes ago. we can make the upload optional just by hooking up another little board.

[johnsarcade]

We had an idea over here and I wanted to ask you guys what you think about it.

A few weeks back Bruno asked the Board about the high score-tables for game rooms. I sat down with my buddy Jochen Hippel (told him to get an account here but he still did not manage to do so ) and we came up with another idea. We think it is quite a cool one but we want to know what you guys think before we are starting with the production of a prototype.

So... this is what we have in mind: We would like to produce a save kit that is not only able to save highscores on your machine but also send this score to a website that saves and compares the scores. You would have a highscore table that compares your scores with your friends and with virtually everybody who owns such a kit. On the net it is not limited to 3 or 5 scores. It would keep track of every score that comes in. A hughe table that you could access from anywhere via browser.

The cool thing is that you can plug your cab in your router.. and the save kit sends your scores to the table... with the dip switch setting in mind!

This would work with pretty much every 8bit-game... but since I am a big big fan of Galaga 88 I asked Jochen to think about a save kit for those machines as well and he came up with an idea for these games, too.

What do you think? Would you use something like that? After all it only makes sense if we can build up a little community that likes to share scores and compete against each other.

Would love to get feedback from you guys.

Greetings!
Stefan

I love this idea SOOOO much and had a similar idea in my head for a long time. I always dreamed of their being a kind of XBOX LIVE leader board for arcade games. The closest I have seen was the Revenge From Mars online leader boards.

[Tyrem]

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I love this idea SOOOO much and had a similar idea in my head for a long time. I always dreamed of their being a kind of XBOX LIVE leader board for arcade games. The closest I have seen was the Revenge From Mars online leader boards.
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we are working on this. don´t worry. it will happen!

[Tyrem]

It's Wizard of Wor

To be honest, I don't see Dirk and me installing those kits on all our machines + 2 16port switches  
But for single cabs, why not.

I am also not sure if i would install it in EVERY machine. But the ones I like and play a lot... why not? It is cool to compare scores with other guys.
We could do something online like Funspot does. Picutures of you with the time and date of the record. Dipswitch-settings would be a point, too.
Endless ideas.

[johnsarcade]

Will this only work with certain CPUs? Like all Z80 games or something? Daughter card with wi-fi that plugs into the Z-80!? How you doing this?!?!? How does it connect to the internet. Am I gonna have to run Ethernet to all my games?!?!?

[Tyrem]

Will this only work with certain CPUs? Like all Z80 games or something? Daughter card with wi-fi that plugs into the Z-80!? How you doing this?!?!? How does it connect to the internet. Am I gonna have to run Ethernet to all my games?!?!?

i will let my buddy jochen answer all the technical stuff in a few days. yeah.. z80 games will work fine. daughter card would be a goid way to let peolpe decide if they add the feature or not. you could connect your cabs to a switch that goes into your router.

jochen is putting a high score save into a wizard of wor at the moment as some kind of a prototype and to get the feeling of how it is done for games that do not even have a table so far. something i would not even be able to think of... but he is quite a clever dude. ever since he was working on the atari st back at Thalion and even before. Some of the people familiar with the ST demo scene know the name Mad Max for sure.

[Tyrem]

Here is a quick update on Wizard of Wor and Gorf, two games that had no high score save kit so far because it was a "little complicated" to include.

Jochen is working on free play as well.

The High Score Table for WoW:


Entering your initials (both players can do this at the same time):


And Gorf:


Remember that we want all the imput we can get... especially when it comes down to games that you would love to have a save kit for!

Greetings... and see you this weekend!
Tyrem

[anunaki]

I'd like to have a Snow Bros High score kit if possible

[Tyrem]

I'd like to have a Snow Bros High score kit if possible

anything is possible.
jochen is working on the hardware prototype of wizard of wor. showed me pics today.
wizard and gorf will come first because nothing exists for those two machines. expect news in a few weeks.

[Laszo]

Cool, I was allready wondering what happened to this project  any pictures to share?

[Tyrem]

Cool, I was allready wondering what happened to this project  any pictures to share?

not that spectacular at the moment. i will post them tomorrow. they are at my store.

[Superully]

that is OUTSTANDING work you're doing there, guys! i have no idea how this works, but i'm thrilled to see it happening! 

[ajhippel]

Here a small update - i couldn't work that much on that project due a lot of work at home... :-/

A normal z80 savekit uses a eprom for the program code and only the z80 will have access... on gorf/wow and every pcb with additional hardware this won't work.
The reason is the additional hardware (e.g. The pattern Board) copies data from the Game-ROM to Screen-Ram. (On WoW or Gorf e.g. the Characters)

This new prototype works with that... (see the pix - don't mind the german language-pack, this is just for memory-map-testing.
BTW: German on Gorf sounds funny, but is unbareable)

yesterday i finished the "Enter Initials"-Program for Gorf (finished WOW already a few Months ago). This was quite heavy and i know now, why there is no savekit for wow or gorf available yet... :-)

Now this week i put the EEprom-Save-Routines and on Weekend Tyrem and I will test it on a Originial Cabinet.

We will send more pix after testing - if everything works fine - the "online-module" will follow

Greetings
Jochen

[Tyrem]

Now this week i put the EEprom-Save-Routines and on Weekend Tyrem and I will test it on a Originial Cabinet.

can´t wait! thrilled to see the results in a dedicated machine! this will rock so much!