Achievement System Idea

[dude1286]

Currently, when I talk about the toolset, I'm really talking about the achievement creation windows, which open up using Direct libraries as well. I currently don't see a reason to port these parts to OpenGL as it would be incredibly difficult to use them on a mobile device. The portion of the code that I am working with is the overlay, which goes over the screen of the game when a specified button is pressed (default is the esc button on keyboard) and acts more like the Xbox Button menu or the in-game XMB on PS3. Everything is open source, so people can make changes to the source code.

The way that you described adding in achievements was more about working with the ROM than the RAM when talking about the cartridge games, and the reason we stayed away from that is that it is more intrusive on the emulator itself. The way we work achievements is that each RAM address is copied twice, once for the current frame and second for the previous frame, and then a developer then goes through the game to find which addresses in the game mean something and use the good addresses to determine when an achievement should be rewarded, like when a key item is found and a bit address turn on corresponding to that item.

Also, I just took a class where I was taught basic OpenGL, like using quads and GLUT, so I may need some pointers on how to make sure that the mobile environment can use the overlay, but the overlay should only use quads with textures as it is not a high-tech piece of software. The final project for the class was driving a car around an intersection in 3D. It didn't use much in terms of physics, but was great to learn the 3D environments using OpenGL. I do want to try to do the coding myself to make sure I can apply the knowledge I learned in the class to an outside project.

Currently, anyone can create achievements for the group, but a troll could ruin a lot of things if given the chance. The originally creator of the project, known as Scott on the website, does keep a database of everything on the site just in case a troll does try to ruin everything. Even if only developers could make achievements, it is very easy to get to that status at the moment as Scott promotes anyone who is interested.

Also, to anyone who thinks that only some achievements ruin the games that they are in, the achievements are made by the community, so don't expect long grinds or too many extra playthroughs of a game as we know that those are annoying and try to stay away from those type of achievements. Although, we do make hard achievements, some are near impossible, like beating Contra III on hard without dying once.