Basically a little hardware interface you plug in the system and connect to Android phone which then would enable you to post scores online and so compete with other players. I have the feature already working in software (MAME), I just need someone who knows how to talk to Neo-Geo hardware to make it work on actual system. You like, don't like? How much would you pay for it? What other features would make it more desirable?
Yeah, something like that. All we need is ability to read scores from memory and to write them back, without crashing the game. Android phone or PC provides internet contention and does merging, sorting, upload and download of high scores, I have all that ready. Syncing scores with online master scoreboard can be done before or after each game, or whenever you want just not in the middle of the game. I'm not really interested to work on this myself as I don't know about Neo-Geo hardware, so there is nothing much more I could anyway, but my source code is available for anyone who wants to try to make a prototype, and if that turns out to work well then I can also invest money in the production. First step however is to determine the interest, and of course we need to confirm is it even possible, but I think it must be possible, one way or another. I also offer $100 for the best prototype in hope to motivate people to give it a try. I think it's a nice feature, and the challenge of making it reality could be fun too, so... can we build it? Who's up for the challenge?
I have a suggestion: Contact NGEV.TEAM They have online rankings for a couple of their games: http://ranking.ngdevteam.com/index.php For now, they are using a code system where the game displays a code that the player then manually enters to their website. Maybe your software could make their system a bit better/more streamlined.
It would be best a memory card to pc adapter that would upload your saves, that would include your high score.
Yes, so I see they have most of what I have, which is some database and internet stuff, however their input and output is not suited for fully automatic implementation I am talking about. What I do differently is that I work directly with memory chunks. Just give me a block strait from the memory and the program will decode it, which works for any game, say Pac-Man, Donkey Kong... but they all use different "formats" to store high scores in their memory, so each game needs to be cracked individually. The good thing here specific to this implementation is that this cracking tool is semi-automatic and on average a game can be cracked in about 5 minutes. The point is this could not only work for Neo-Geo, but also for any other arcade PCB, including multi-game boards like 60-in-1 and such, or so it would seem. Let's try it and find out! That's too easy! Seriously though, I didn't know there is a memory card for Neo-Geo. You must be talking about AES? I only have arcade cabinets and MVS. So has anyone fiddled with any such adapter (Memory<->PC), does it exist already?
The NeoGeo memory card are used on AES but there are some MVS boards that can use it. Some MVS boards have the MV-IC memory card reader those are: MV-1, MV-4F, MV-4T and MV-6F. The memory card is a JEIDA memory card, in the case of the neo geo it's the V3. I believe there might be pc readers for those kind of memory cards because they were very common in japan. The thing is, how can you prevent people of using the unibios, setting infinite life and maxing the scores?
Cool. I have two 1-slot motherboards, hopefully one of them has it. That means nothing to me, but still I could probably make a driver to read it via parallel or some serial port. Do we know how it works: pinout, voltages, transfer protocol, data packets description and such? Yeah, that's a pickle. I don't know, throw me a bone here... give me something to work with, some clue, some idea. Besides, I am not aware what that unibios does, what's it for. I thought we could plug directly to the legs of some chip (motherboard or cartridge), would that bypass unibios thing and solve the problem maybe? Would it be possible to read and write to memory if we attach our adapter to the chip legs directly, is that even possible while the game is running?
the JEIDA was a common card back in the day. This is a jeida reader for old notebooks: http://www.ebay.com/itm/Socket-Dual...t=BI_Control_Systems_PLCs&hash=item336e7880d3 The Unibios is a BIOS replacement developed by Razoola. That BIOS has tons of great features like jukebox, region changing, arcade and AES mode and the one that's picky is cheat codes. Every AES game has it's own build in list on that BIOS. To be honest I don't think you can create a method that would prevent people from doing it. There's just no way to spot the BIOS with just high score data. Even the memory card save upload idea could be manipulated. The only way would be hoping people wouldn't cheat. I feel bad to bring such bad news but to my knowledge it would be impossible to prevent that.
Ok, seems JEIDA uses some "picture transfer protocol" which is supposed to be simple, so I think connection with a PC could be possible via parallel or serial port, without any hardware adapter in between, just plain wires, and I'll make a driver for it if someone can help me find specifications and to test it. Our advantage is that we are building it in hardware, so we can make it difficult for majority of people to even attempt cheating. We also have access to anything that is going on with the game, so we should be able to tell if cheats are enabled or not, or something. In any case I don't think cheating is our problem here, that's more of a problem with Playstation and Xbox, for role playing games and such. But this is meant for friends, two of us, three of us... five or ten, and the more the merrier, but it's not about making social network. For me it's about making something that yet does not exist, a technical challenge that I just wanna see turn into reality, and if that's fun, then we'll make it better. I just don't wanna give up without even trying. -- What I'm really worried about here is that there is no one out there who actually cares to play these games anymore.
This is something that bothers me too about the NeoGeo. Most of the NeoGeo "fan" base don't actually play the games, just hoard. The regular place go to gather information on the neo geo is the Neo-Geo forum where the drama lives. But there's also the http://www.neogeoforlife.com/. The site's owner is very friendly and enjoy making reviews of every neo geo game. Just like I'm doing now but in portuguese. There are people that still play and still enjoy digging some franchises story. 2 months ago, I digged hard on the web and got every SNK anime with portuguese subtitle or dubbed. Watched them all to find more about Terry Boggard's story and things like that. Give it a try and promote the high score board and people will gather. I'm always sad to play alone and already discussed that here on the forum. It would be nice to have more people to play with.
Shhh. There is a good reason why people prefer to use avatars and nick names on the internet, and posting personal details like family name is unnecessary and irresponsible. The mask is not to protect me, but to protect the people I love. So, my friend, let's do this scoreboard thing, together! How about it?
There is a good reason why you've upset people on several forums, including Neo-Geo.com, mameworld.info and BYOAC. To have a warning posted about you permanently on the top of NG, you have to have done something pretty major - even Dion doesn't have that privilege. They post your personal info to try and get you to stop. Nobody is going to give their time and expertise so that you can make money out of something. I would suggest learning some basic electronics yourself - if you already know how to code, you're practically there, anyway. To answer your question, though... I wouldn't use it if you gave it to me. Sorry - no interest whatsoever.
Surely this is really easy to fake/spoof too... I am sure if you made this, fake scores would be all over it within a week
You misunderstood. I wanted to pay for it and give it you. Of course I could make it myself, with some googling, but I already have it in my emulator and that's what I play. If you don't want it then I will not be making it. You are sorry for the wrong reason. So anyway, can you explain why would you not be interested? That's kind of strange. When there were arcades people could compete by playing on the same machine, but today people have machines at their homes and we can not all compete like we used to. If you understand arcade games you would realize that's a huge part of arcade gaming experience missing right there, and I would like to understand why would you prefer to play with yourself when we could all play together and compete for highest score like we used to. Can you explain please, why not?
You must be from KLOV, right? There people thought new sensor input I invented can not be possible, that my game-play video is fake and my emulator vaporware. What can I say? Everyone can download it and see for themselves in less than five minutes, so I don't say anything, I just laugh, ha-ha-ha. Anyway, what do you want? I don't really get what are you talking about. Are you accusing me of something? Attacking me? Insulting me? Please be more clear.
No, not right. You are reading memory values from the console - you do not have anyway to protect the input. Someone could just post fake highscores with (probably very little) hacking. Whether this is a good idea or not is pointless if all the highscores are fakeable and I dont see any way you could stop it. Not only that, how are you going to read the memory anyway? I am pretty sure that there is no connection in the cart slot.... so that involves soldering? I dont think many people will take that up.. Or you are injecting your own code before the game? Just seems like there isnt a good way to get it to work on real hardware and even if you did - people would just cheat either via unibios, faking the input to your device or just hacking up the android part itself and report what ever values they like. Also, after your spam attack with my name in it - you can go fuck yourself anyway.
I can make it cheat-proof, you don't need to worry about it, and I already explained it's just a minor concern to start with. So beside that, is there any other reason why would you prefer to play against yourself instead of to compete with other people like we used to back in the days?
