[openMSX-devel] MSX GameStats

[Sander Z. <sn...@ms...>]

Hey openGUYZ, (^_^)

You probably might have heard about this idea from Manuel already, but
I'd like to know if you would be interested in developing a new feature
in openMSX called MSX GameStats (might be a working title).

First, let me tell you what the idea is all about. The idea is to allow
people who use an emulator running GameStats to fill in an MSX Resource
Center login/pass in order to allow statistics about the games played to
the MRC, in a similar way that the audioscrobbler plugin does for the
website http://last.fm/. With these stats, we can create charts by user,
overall charts, weekly charts, by game/developer, who plays which games
the most etc.

I've already contacted Sandy of Generation-MSX about developing this in
co-operation, so that users could request game info on the games they
are playing directly from their MSX emulator, and we could link directly
to the Generation-MSX detail pages from our statistical pages. I assume
and hope this will also motivate people to submit missing game info,
screenshots and cheats to Generation-MSX more often. He is as
enthusiastic about the idea as I am.

The best way of identifying separate games would most likely be the use
of - what else - hashes, using the RomDB as a great starting point.
There are, however, some difficulties with identifying games on dsk
images, as they might contain save data. One way of solving this might
be to make a hash of the first 50% of a disk image or the last 50% of a
disk image sending not only the hash to the MRC, but also indicating
which type of hash is being sent (full, first 50%, last 50%). I think
it's very unlikely a game saves data on both the first -and- the last
50% of the disk image, but to be on the save side we could even make 33%
or even 25% hashes. (of course this might increase the amount of doubles).

As for privacy, the GameStats will only be submitted when a person has
logged in to it by entering MRC username and password. Furthermore, an
indication might be given for unknown software (which might be an
unknown release, but of course also private or in-development stuff),
perhaps even linking to a Generation-MSX page to allow people to submit
the title. Naturally, stats on unknown hashes are submitted to, but not
processed @ the MRC.

I think that if openMSX and blueMSX both support the MSX GameStats
project, we might have a really nice new feature for the emulators,
generation MSX and MRC on our hands. Provided that we develop an open
standard which uses the same hashing system in all emulators, I do hope
and expect that other in-development MSX emulators will implement this
new feature as well.

I have sent this same e-mail to the developers of blueMSX as well, and
if you all respond enthusiastically I think it will be up to the
open/blue team to develop a standardized way of hashing MSX software
first, and then to start properly processing it at MRC/GenMSX.

So, after this long e-mail I'd like to ask you at first: what do you
think of it? Shall we do it?! And what do you feel is the proper
solution to hashing disk-games?

Cheers in advance,

Sander